Is God... PG Version

[3mmanu3lrc]

But it clearly doesn't mean that.

 

[GwJ]

But does it matter? It's not relevant in a god debate?

 

[Dre89]

It doesn't matter.

But the reason why people believe in Socrates but not Jesus is because there are no claims of Socrates committing supernatural feats.

Gw- Why do you find the debate meaningless? Is it because it is not empirical?

Ballin4death- Observation only shows simulation of control by a mind. You can logically infer, but not deductively conclude that simulation means a mind is necessarily behind it.

 

[ballin4life]

You can't deductively conclude anything by empirical methodology anyway. Empirical methodology is inductive reasoning.

 

[GwJ]

I say it's pointless because there's nothing anybody can say that will definitively prove anything. You can't prove god or disprove god; only talk about why you think there should or shouldn't be a need for one.

 

[Grandeza]

Okay I think you've made yourself clear about your opinion on the status of this debate. You don't have to continuously come in and repeat yourself. In most debates, whether they be about morals or a vast number of other topics, there is no conclusively right or wrong. Otherwise there would be no debate. So a lot of these debates are just points in ones favor that the opposition attempts to refute or discuss. I don't think that this debate should stop just because you find it meaningless. If one side wishes to bring up a point, why not have a thread for them to discuss it?

 

[GwJ]

Dre asked. I answered.

Problem?

 

[Grandeza]

I apologize for the misunderstanding then.

 

[Theftz22]

I'd assume your issue with empirical methodology is the problem of induction, or is it something else Dre?

 

[Ballistics]

Jesus very likely existed in one form or another. The historical evidence for his existence is simply overwhelming.

What I don't believe is that he was divine or actually the "son of God." The evidence for his divinity is far less convincing.

What is your overwhelming evidence for his existence? Fool. The Bible? Forged historians?

GW I applaud your compassion for trying to help these weaklings, but just give it up. Let the fools die as fools if they choose to cling to superstitions established thousands of years ago. I hope the lot of you hurry up and die and go to the heaven that doesn't exist. You mock the modern human race by believing in God. Close minded little drones sucking up all the useless knowledge of your parents. Educate yourselves and stop clinging to blind faith.

To the younger kids I understand its hard to break away and go against the values that were taught to you but you older kids have no excuse, time to grow up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww&feature=related

 

[Theftz22]

Do you have an actual argument to make or are you just going to throw out ad hominems? This coming from an atheist, some of you are worse than the religious you hate so much.

 

[Dre89]

Ballistics is clearly trolling....I hope.

There's no point addressing fundamentalist athiests.

Gw- Technically nothing can be proven absolutely true, so I find it ironic to see you in a debate environment.

To whoever asked what my problem with empirical methodology is, I've explained multiple times I don't have an issue with it. What I have an issue with is when people assume it is the only way of concluding truth.

 

[_Keno_]

the religious you hate so much.

Why do you think we hate the religious? A harsh and false judgment. We frown upon religion itself, but most of us really do care about the people. Of course, there are dbags on both sides, and people like that generally receive the most attention.

And no, Ballistics is not trolling, he is just genuinely frustrated at humanity in regards to religion. I know the feeling.

 

[Grandeza]

Why do you think we hate the religious? A harsh and false judgment. We frown upon religion itself, but most of us really do care about the people. Of course, there are dbags on both sides, and people like that generally receive the most attention.

And no, Ballistics is not trolling, he is just genuinely frustrated at humanity in regards to religion. I know the feeling.

He was only talking to Ballistics I believe because all he's doing is trolling at this point. Everyone is having relatively civil discussion but he comes in and decides to just flame. It does nothing to progress the discussion and just makes him come off as ignorant.

 

[Dre89]

He was only talking to Ballistics I believe because all he's doing is trolling at this point. Everyone is having relatively civil discussion but he comes in and decides to just flame. It does nothing to progress the discussion and just makes him come off as ignorant.

The Dez strikes again.

 

[GwJ]

Ballistics is clearly trolling....I hope.

There's no point addressing fundamentalist athiests.

Gw- Technically nothing can be proven absolutely true, so I find it ironic to see you in a debate environment.

To whoever asked what my problem with empirical methodology is, I've explained multiple times I don't have an issue with it. What I have an issue with is when people assume it is the only way of concluding truth.

You know what I mean Dre.

 

[ballin4life]

Do you have an actual argument to make or are you just going to throw out ad hominems? This coming from an atheist, some of you are worse than the religious you hate so much.

lol. What do you mean by worse? There aren't many atheists that are worse imo than suicide bombers and the like.

Gw- Technically nothing can be proven absolutely true, so I find it ironic to see you in a debate environment.

Men are mortal
Socrates is a man
Socrates is mortal

To whoever asked what my problem with empirical methodology is, I've explained multiple times I don't have an issue with it. What I have an issue with is when people assume it is the only way of concluding truth.

The theist argument relies on empirical methodology as I showed above.

Science is just one type of empirical methodology that deals specifically with cases where we can do a repeatable experiment.

 

[Ganonsburg]

Science is just one type of empirical methodology that deals specifically with cases where we can do a repeatable experiment.

Historical science, ie evolution, doesn't rely on repeatable experiments. Yet when I argued that, everyone said that it's still science. I don't want to backtrack to that discussion, but I found it necessary to point out.

 

[_Keno_]

He was only talking to Ballistics I believe because all he's doing is trolling at this point. Everyone is having relatively civil discussion but he comes in and decides to just flame. It does nothing to progress the discussion and just makes him come off as ignorant.

The wording implies all atheists. Not only that, but its still a terrible judgment just to make on Ballis.

And yeah, I know there is no room for that in the DH; doesn't mean I cant agree though.

 

[ballin4life]

Historical science, ie evolution, doesn't rely on repeatable experiments. Yet when I argued that, everyone said that it's still science. I don't want to backtrack to that discussion, but I found it necessary to point out.

Partially true, although as I have stated before, evolution is based on experiments (some of which you can even do in a high school biology class, like observing bacterial evolution).

But I suppose that sciences like geology or obviously paleontology don't rely much on experiments.

 

[Theftz22]

lol. What do you mean by worse? There aren't many atheists that are worse imo than suicide bombers and the like.

What I mean is that atheists who have no argument other than hurling one liners at people can be just as irrational as the theists that they ridicule.

 

[Theftz22]

This thread seems to be slipping away. I'll bump with a long *** copy paste of a post from another forum. Topic was what are your beliefs on god.

"Well, my position depends highly upon the definition of god given. There are literally thousands of gods over the course of human history and my position on each one will obviously be different. People sometimes define god as love or something ridiculous like that which I of course must believe in that god because I don't deny its existence (though it's stupid to place a label over something we already have named and ignore the basic attributes god nearly always has). My general position is weak atheism, that is the lack of belief in a god. I do not assert that god in general does not exist (strong atheism), because I could not hope to possibly disprove the existence of every possible definition of god, but I rather assert that there is no good reason or evidence to believe in one, and thus my only burden of proof is disproving theistic claims. However, there are certain gods I believe can be falsified, and in regards to these I am a strong atheist. Prominent among these is the Judeo-Christian god and Allah. For sake of familiarity, I'll focus on the Judeo-Christian god. Before I do that, I'll mention two things: One, I enjoy conversation with an intelligent theist or deist but I generally cba to discuss those that take the historical claims of certain religions seriously and especially literalists. Secondly, I have a problem with the way the term agnostic is often used. A theist is someone who believes in a god and anyone else is a type of atheist, that includes I don't know. Now, to focus on the Judeo-Christian god.

The most basic way of proving that the J-C god does not exist is to show that he is internally contradictory. Firstly, omnipotence contradicts itself. Can god create a task that he cannot perform? If he can, he cannot perform the task and is not omnipotent. If he cannot, he is already not omnipotent. Next, omniscience contradicts omnipotence. Can god pose a question to which he cannot answer? If he can, he is not omniscient. If he cannot, he is not omnipotent. Also, an omniscient god knows his own future and his actions before he can commit then. In this sense, he loses free will and is not omnipotent. He would literally be the most limited being in the universe, only able to perform one exact action at any given time, his actions plotted out linearly with no option for choice. If he does not know his future, then he is not omniscient. Additionally, this god is claimed as being perfect, yet needs worship. A perfect being does not have any needs or deficiencies, but the J-C god regards not believing in it as the only unforgivable sin, punishable by eternal torture in hell. Additionally, perfect justice and perfect mercy are incompatible. This is because justice is to treat someone as they deserve to be treated but mercy is to treat someone better than they deserve to be treated. The concept of hell also contradicts the idea of both mercy and justice, because it promises infinite punishment for finite "crime". Another precept of Christianity is that anyone, except the non-believer, can avoid punishment regardless of what they did in life by atoning to god in the end. This also contradicts the property of perfect justice.

The next set of contradictions are in reality. A god that is omnipotent, benevolent, and omniscient knows about evil, could prevent evil, and wants to prevent evil. But this all could not be true, why then is their evil? The typical response to this is the free will defense, but I will address this later. The next bit is the argument from non-belief. That is, if god does not want us all to go to hell and therefore believe in him, why does he not make his existence readily known? God, being omniscient, knows what it would take to convince everyone of his existence. Being omnipotent, he can execute said actions. Being benevolent, he wants to have everyone to avoid hell. But why then are there non-believers? The theist could turn again to free will, but this fails. God making his presence known does not interfere with free will. This is made more prevalent by the fact that people in other areas of the world grow up to believe in a "false" god. God could in his almightiness instantly reveal which religion was true. And to prove his existence, at the bare minimum I believe a few miracles that could be captured now that we have recording technology would be nice.

Next we turn to the arguments for the existence of the J-C god. I will focus on three of the best, most popular arguments. Additionally I will include the free will defense, which is not an argument for his existence, but a counter argument to the problem of evil.

1. The Kalam Cosmological Argument

The formulation:
P1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
P2: The universe began to exist.
C: The universe has a cause.

The theist will then go on to establish what properties the cause must have had, this includes timeless, spaceless, immaterial, transcendent, personal, and vastly powerful.

The problems:
1. It assumes that we can even go sequentially prior to the big bang. The big bang being the beginning of time, it is meaningless to go sequentially prior to time. As many have pointed out, this is like saying "North of the North Pole". This contradicts the statement "the universe began to exist", for it did not begin in the sense that there may be nothing prior to it.
2. It applies causality to anything "before the big bang". Assuming we can even go before the big bang, as causality is a property of time, space, and the universe as we know it, it is unjustified to apply it to anything before the universe. Specifically, when the argument says everything that begins to exist has a cause, this is only justified inside the universe itself. In this way the argument commits a fallacy of composition, that is assuming that because everything within a system has a property, the system itself must have that property. An example, humans are made up of atoms. Atoms are not visible to the naked eye. But a human is visible to the naked eye. Similarly, all things within the universe that begin to exist have a cause, but it does not follow that the universe itself had a cause.
3. The first premise is an assumption even of the universe itself. That is, nothing that we observe truly "begins to exist" as is meant by the argument. Matter is neither created nor destroyed. We never see things begin to exist, only that we see them change form. The first premise is an assumption.
4. It relies on a faulty concept of "nothing". The argument relies on the fact that before the big bang there was nothing. But nothing cannot exist, if it did, it would be something. Anything that exists has properties, as shown by the law of identity. The "nothingness" used the kalam is a myth, the nothingness scientists speculate could have existed is actually believed to be able to give rise to the universe, see A Universe From Nothing by Lawrence Krauss.
5. The hypothesis asserted has no explanatory power and leads to contradictions. In order for the hypothesis that this god created this universe to be used, it must explain itself. How did god create the universe? By what mechanic? Additionally it leads to contradictions. A being that exists outside of time cannot make an action. An action is sequential by nature and involves cause and effect. This cannot happen in a state of timelessness. What does it even mean to exist outside of time? Existing is done sequentially, from one moment to the next.
6. It gives no reason for god's existence. God is said to be timeless and therefore not denote a cause. Even accepting this, god must have some reason for existing rather than not. The argument presumes that god's existence is the natural state before the big bang, which is just asserted and never proved.
7. It assumes A theory time. I'm not educated enough on this subject to talk about it, but just know that the whole argument would be invalid if B theory time were true. The jury is still out, but it's shaky ground to rest an entire argument on. You should research this to learn more, here's a start.

2. The Fine-Tuning Argument
The Formulation
P1: The fine tuning of the universe for life is either due to chance, physical necessity, or design.
P2: It is neither due to chance or physical necessity.
C: It is due to design.

The problems:
1. The universe is not fine tuned for life. It is estimated that less than 2% of the universe could even support life. Additionally, only .00000000117% of the Earth's mass is biomass.
2. It assumes the probability of each possible set of constants is equal. We only make probability judgments like this if we have multiple data points.
3. The constants are linked. I'm not good at explaining this one so "In order for the probability argument to be valid, the fundamental constants under consideration have to be independent. That is, one cannot claim that the gravitational constant and the speed of expansion of the universe were individually tuned, since they are clearly related. The electromagnetic force is mediated by massless photons which travel at the speed of light, so therefore the strength of this force is likely related to the speed of light."
4. Certain sets of constants are impossible. They will not be mathematically self consistent.
5. It projects the idea that our life could not exist under certain conditions, and assumes that no life could exist under certain conditions. In fact, we have no idea what type of life form could have emerged in a different universe. The argument assumes carbon based life. Evolution explains that the organisms evolve to fit the surroundings, hence why it seems fine-tuned.
5. Computer simulations suggest that not all of the purportedly "fine-tuned" parameters may be as fine-tuned as has been claimed. Victor Stenger has simulated different universes in which four fundamental parameters are varied. He found that long-lived stars could exist over a wide parameter range, and concluded that "... a wide variation of constants of physics leads to universes that are long-lived enough for life to evolve, although human life need not exist in such universes".
6. The multiverse theory. This is the theory that our universe is just one of many, each with different fundamental constants. It's pure speculation at this point, but that puts it on even ground with the god hypothesis for the fine tuning of the universe.
7. The anthropic principle. We are living in exactly the type of universe we would expect to see considering how the fundamental constants are. ""The intelligent beings in these regions should therefore not be surprised if they observe that their locality in the universe satisfies the conditions that are necessary for their existence. It is a bit like a rich person living in a wealthy neighborhood not seeing any poverty."

3. The Ontological Argument
The Formulation
P1: God is the greatest being conceivable.
P2: God exists in the mind.
P3: To exist in the mind and reality is greater than to exist in the mind alone.
C: Therefore, god must exist in the mind and reality.

The Problems:
1. It confuses the idea of something with the thing itself. God does not exist in the mind in the same sense as we mean by existence. The only way a thing itself can exist is in reality. It is not god which is in my mind but the idea of god. The idea of god in my mind cannot create universes and perform miracles.
2. It treats existence as a property. The argument poses all these properties of god and says that god would be greater if he had one more property: existence. But existence is not a property. It is the condition a thing must have to even exhibit properties. For instance, a green, slimy object is not green and slimy unless it actually exists. Existence cannot be treated as a property, it is what enables things to have properties.
3. It relies on a subjective concept of greatness. What is greater than another is opinion. One could simply reject the third premise that existence is greater than non-existence.

And now for the free will defense:
"A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can't cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil. The fact that free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against God's omnipotence nor against His goodness; for He could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good."

The Problems:
1. Free will is falsified by omniscience. God's all knowing nature means that he knows the future of all people and their actions before you execute them. This means that you are inevitably going to do one thing rather than the other, there is no other possible outcome, and thus no free will.
2. God could create beings that freely chose good over evil. His omnipotence could create creatures with free will that simply did not freely choose evil.
3. It does not address natural evil. That is, things such as disease, natural disasters, and aging bodies. These are not caused by an action of any free being and thus is not covered by the free will defense.
4. God could intervene to stop acts of evil (at the very least gratuitous evil) before they happen without violating free will. He could allow beings to freely choose evil but stop them before they do it. Now if he did this in all cases then there would be no choice, but he could intervene in only gratuitous evil, such as by killing Hitler. Also, think this scene."

Then someone actually brought up Pascal's Wager (LOL) so I commented on that.

"The Formulation

The Problems
1. It assumes the probability of god existing is exactly equal to him not existing. Self explanatory.
2. It discounts religions. Many religions maintain that the only way to salvation is to believe in their specific god. This shows that basic belief in god is not considered a guaranteed way to heaven, but their must be another wager of itself to pick a specific religion.
3. Belief is assumed to have zero cost. I'll just copy paste this, "For one thing, if you go through life believing a lie, that is a bad thing in itself. Besides that, there is more to being a believer than just saying, "Okay, I believe now," and getting on with your life. Serious believers spend a lot of their time in church, and contribute a lot of money as well. There's a reason why some towns have very affluent looking buildings for churches, and why large and elaborate cathedrals are possible: they're funded by folks who donate a tenth of their income throughout their lives to tithing. This is surely quite a waste if the object of worship isn't real. That's to say nothing of the persecution of other groups that's been instigated in the name of God throughout the ages. Also, in the US, churches don't have to pay taxes, which includes property tax. Property tax is what goes to schools, so all the land that churches own is sucking money out of schools. When "God Did It" becomes an acceptable answer, there is little incentive to continue exploring the question. More damaging, the "success" of this theory encourages one to apply it to other areas of human understanding. Practiced in this manner, theism can actively discourage human knowledge by compelling people to follow an arbitrary code of conduct, rather than one based on logic and reason."
4. It assumes that one has complete control over your own beliefs and can change at any time arbitrarily. For instance, I could not just say right now "I believe in god", it would be false. God is omniscient and knows your true beliefs.
5. It assumes that god judges non-believers completely apart from their actions (assumes the major religions are true I guess. ).

 

[Dre89]

Was that you who wrote all that?

 

[MK26]

wow...i can't hope to debate with you on this entire post, but I'll at least point out a few mistakes (if that's the right word) and respond to a few things.

However, there are certain gods I believe can be falsified, and in regards to these I am a strong atheist. Prominent among these is the Judeo-Christian god and Allah. For sake of familiarity, I'll focus on the Judeo-Christian god.

They're actually the same God...all three religions are Abrahamic and so all three religions believe in Abraham's God.

The most basic way of proving that the J-C god does not exist is to show that he is internally contradictory. Firstly, omnipotence contradicts itself. Can god create a task that he cannot perform? If he can, he cannot perform the task and is not omnipotent. If he cannot, he is already not omnipotent. Next, omniscience contradicts omnipotence. Can god pose a question to which he cannot answer? If he can, he is not omniscient. If he cannot, he is not omnipotent.

I can't give my own answer to this one, but the answer I've heard is "yes". As in, "Can God create a stone so heavy that he cannot lift it?" "Yes, but he'd then proceed to lift it anyways".

Also, an omniscient god knows his own future and his actions before he can commit then. In this sense, he loses free will and is not omnipotent. He would literally be the most limited being in the universe, only able to perform one exact action at any given time, his actions plotted out linearly with no option for choice. If he does not know his future, then he is not omniscient.

hmmm...I don't quite have an answer to this one. I'm gonna hafta pass.

Additionally, this god is claimed as being perfect, yet needs worship. A perfect being does not have any needs or deficiencies, but the J-C god regards not believing in it as the only unforgivable sin, punishable by eternal torture in hell.

Nowhere in Christianity at least (not 100% sure on Judaism) does anybody say that God's the one in need of prayer. Church doctrine says that God has already called each of us, and we're the ones who need to respond. Furthermore, unbelief is not the 'only' unforgivable sin. You can be a practicing Catholic but if for one day you decide to go home, kill your wife and then shoot yourself in the head, and then you go through with it, don't expect to get to Heaven.

Additionally, perfect justice and perfect mercy are incompatible. This is because justice is to treat someone as they deserve to be treated but mercy is to treat someone better than they deserve to be treated. The concept of hell also contradicts the idea of both mercy and justice, because it promises infinite punishment for finite "crime".

Again, pass, not familiar enough with the concepts and don't have an answer.

Another precept of Christianity is that anyone, except the non-believer, can avoid punishment regardless of what they did in life by atoning to god in the end. This also contradicts the property of perfect justice.

I don't quite see the contradiction. You screwed up, you're sincerely sorry for what you did, you promise not to do it again, you take a short punishment here and have to log a bit of time in purgatory after death before being able to go to Heaven (according to Roman Catholicism, at least). I don't see punishment being avoided, just being mitigated on the grounds of true sorrow for your actions.

The next set of contradictions are in reality. A god that is omnipotent, benevolent, and omniscient knows about evil, could prevent evil, and wants to prevent evil. But this all could not be true, why then is their evil? The typical response to this is the free will defense, but I will address this later. The next bit is the argument from non-belief. That is, if god does not want us all to go to hell and therefore believe in him, why does he not make his existence readily known? God, being omniscient, knows what it would take to convince everyone of his existence. Being omnipotent, he can execute said actions. Being benevolent, he wants to have everyone to avoid hell. But why then are there non-believers? The theist could turn again to free will, but this fails. God making his presence known does not interfere with free will. This is made more prevalent by the fact that people in other areas of the world grow up to believe in a "false" god. God could in his almightiness instantly reveal which religion was true. And to prove his existence, at the bare minimum I believe a few miracles that could be captured now that we have recording technology would be nice.

But the free will defence does cover this. If God showed a sign that caused every non-believer to believe, that's not really giving anyone a choice now is it? Can you truly love someone if you don't have the option to choose otherwise? The line I've heard is "God provides enough evidence to convince the believer, but not convert the non-believer" - but, either way, if he showed us a sure sign there still would be non-believers. case in point: Sister Marie Simon-Pierre. She was miraculously cured of Parkinson's (and I don't use that term lightly, her cure was, after five years of study and scientific analysis, deemed scientifically unexplainable) after praying to the late Pope John Paul II. And I don't want to hear anything from anybody about "the Vatican is against science", their criteria and methods for determining whether or not something can be scientifically explained is ridiculously strict. See this: atheistic scientist contacted anonymously to study bone marrow samples, and determined that the patient died of Leukemia. She learned later that her analysis had been sent to the Vatican for the case of St. Marguerite d'Youville's canonization. Said patient is alive and well (and Leukemia-free!) today.

Next we turn to the arguments for the existence of the J-C god. I will focus on three of the best, most popular arguments. Additionally I will include the free will defense, which is not an argument for his existence, but a counter argument to the problem of evil.

1. The Kalam Cosmological Argument

The formulation:
P1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
P2: The universe began to exist.
C: The universe has a cause.

The theist will then go on to establish what properties the cause must have had, this includes timeless, spaceless, immaterial, transcendent, personal, and vastly powerful.

The problems:
1. It assumes that we can even go sequentially prior to the big bang. The big bang being the beginning of time, it is meaningless to go sequentially prior to time. As many have pointed out, this is like saying "North of the North Pole". This contradicts the statement "the universe began to exist", for it did not begin in the sense that there may be nothing prior to it.
2. It applies causality to anything "before the big bang". Assuming we can even go before the big bang, as causality is a property of time, space, and the universe as we know it, it is unjustified to apply it to anything before the universe. Specifically, when the argument says everything that begins to exist has a cause, this is only justified inside the universe itself. In this way the argument commits a fallacy of composition, that is assuming that because everything within a system has a property, the system itself must have that property. An example, humans are made up of atoms. Atoms are not visible to the naked eye. But a human is visible to the naked eye. Similarly, all things within the universe that begin to exist have a cause, but it does not follow that the universe itself had a cause.
3. The first premise is an assumption even of the universe itself. That is, nothing that we observe truly "begins to exist" as is meant by the argument. Matter is neither created nor destroyed. We never see things begin to exist, only that we see them change form. The first premise is an assumption.
4. It relies on a faulty concept of "nothing". The argument relies on the fact that before the big bang there was nothing. But nothing cannot exist, if it did, it would be something. Anything that exists has properties, as shown by the law of identity. The "nothingness" used the kalam is a myth, the nothingness scientists speculate could have existed is actually believed to be able to give rise to the universe, see A Universe From Nothing by Lawrence Krauss.
5. The hypothesis asserted has no explanatory power and leads to contradictions. In order for the hypothesis that this god created this universe to be used, it must explain itself. How did god create the universe? By what mechanic? Additionally it leads to contradictions. A being that exists outside of time cannot make an action. An action is sequential by nature and involves cause and effect. This cannot happen in a state of timelessness. What does it even mean to exist outside of time? Existing is done sequentially, from one moment to the next.
6. It gives no reason for god's existence. God is said to be timeless and therefore not denote a cause. Even accepting this, god must have some reason for existing rather than not. The argument presumes that god's existence is the natural state before the big bang, which is just asserted and never proved.
7. It assumes A theory time. I'm not educated enough on this subject to talk about it, but just know that the whole argument would be invalid if B theory time were true. The jury is still out, but it's shaky ground to rest an entire argument on. You should research this to learn more, here's a start.

Sorry, I can't touch this. I'm trying to reconcile the idea of something being before something else with that of time not existing, and none of the sources I could find adquately cover that.

2. The Fine-Tuning Argument
The Formulation
P1: The fine tuning of the universe for life is either due to chance, physical necessity, or design.
P2: It is neither due to chance or physical necessity.
C: It is due to design.

The problems:
1. The universe is not fine tuned for life. It is estimated that less than 2% of the universe could even support life. Additionally, only .00000000117% of the Earth's mass is biomass.
2. It assumes the probability of each possible set of constants is equal. We only make probability judgments like this if we have multiple data points.
3. The constants are linked. I'm not good at explaining this one so "In order for the probability argument to be valid, the fundamental constants under consideration have to be independent. That is, one cannot claim that the gravitational constant and the speed of expansion of the universe were individually tuned, since they are clearly related. The electromagnetic force is mediated by massless photons which travel at the speed of light, so therefore the strength of this force is likely related to the speed of light."
4. Certain sets of constants are impossible. They will not be mathematically self consistent.
5. It projects the idea that our life could not exist under certain conditions, and assumes that no life could exist under certain conditions. In fact, we have no idea what type of life form could have emerged in a different universe. The argument assumes carbon based life. Evolution explains that the organisms evolve to fit the surroundings, hence why it seems fine-tuned.
5. Computer simulations suggest that not all of the purportedly "fine-tuned" parameters may be as fine-tuned as has been claimed. Victor Stenger has simulated different universes in which four fundamental parameters are varied. He found that long-lived stars could exist over a wide parameter range, and concluded that "... a wide variation of constants of physics leads to universes that are long-lived enough for life to evolve, although human life need not exist in such universes".
6. The multiverse theory. This is the theory that our universe is just one of many, each with different fundamental constants. It's pure speculation at this point, but that puts it on even ground with the god hypothesis for the fine tuning of the universe.
7. The anthropic principle. We are living in exactly the type of universe we would expect to see considering how the fundamental constants are. ""The intelligent beings in these regions should therefore not be surprised if they observe that their locality in the universe satisfies the conditions that are necessary for their existence. It is a bit like a rich person living in a wealthy neighborhood not seeing any poverty."

(Source)

1. If one one-hundred-millionth of a percentage point of the Earth's biomass is enough for me to have this conversation with you, it's certainly nothing in the way of evidence against the fine-tuning of the universe.
2. Not necessarily. It just assumes that there's a chance of each possible value, not that any chances will be equal.
3. Just because some constants are linked doesn't mean that, given one, you can plug it into a mathematical formula and calculate others. If none of the brightest minds on the planet can account for gravity in unified field theory, I'm inclined to believe its strength doesn't correlate in any way to the nuclear forces.
4. Your point? I can't have two aces of spades in a poker hand, but that doesn't mean I can't have two aces, or two spades, or a 6 and a jack at the same time.
5. You didn't include the next sentence "Computer simulations suggest that not all of the purportedly "fine-tuned" parameters may be as fine-tuned as has been claimed. Victor Stenger has simulated different universes in which four fundamental parameters are varied. He found that long-lived stars could exist over a wide parameter range, and concluded that "... a wide variation of constants of physics leads to universes that are long-lived enough for life to evolve, although human life need not exist in such universes".[7] However Stenger's work has been criticised as having several fundamental flaws by other physicists.[8][9]". My source says that a deviation in the strong force of +2%/-5% would prevent stars (ie a stable source of energy) from being able to exist for any significant period of time.
6. The "only viable nonreligious explanation" for perceived fine-tuning cannot be directly observed and has no independent evidence in favour of it. How many scientific theories have been accepted without observation or evidence? Believing in multiverse theory requires faith that borders on religiousness.
7. I'm just going to quote this verbatim, but to get straight to the point, it's not all that amazing that the universe we observe is able to create and sustain life - it's that we can observe it in the first place.
[collapse="http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/theistic-proofs/the-teleological-argument/the-argument-from-fine-tuning/the-weak-anthropic-principle/"]In response to this objection, defenders of the argument from fine-tuning often make use of a story involving a firing-squad devised by John Leslie. You are to be executed by a firing-squad of a hundred trained marksmen, the story goes. You hear the command to open fire, and the sound of the guns, and then silence; you are not dead, you hear silence. All of the marksmen missed! Pondering, you realise that had the marksmen not missed you would not have been able to reflect on the attempted execution, that only a failed execution would have allowed you to be here now, listening to the silence. However, you do not infer from this that the fact that the marksmen missed is unsurprising. You remain astonished that one hundred trained marksmen could all miss simultaneously.

In this illustration, it seems that what is surprising is not that looking back at the execution you see that it failed, but that you are able to look back at the execution at all. Similarly, what is surprising about the universe is not that we observe it to be such as to allow the development and sustenance of life, but that we are able to observe it at all. The vast majority of possible universes would not allow the existence of universes, and yet the actual universe does. The weak anthropic principle does not seem to make this unsurprising any more than it does the hundred marksmen missing.[/collapse]

3. The Ontological Argument
The Formulation
P1: God is the greatest being conceivable.
P2: God exists in the mind.
P3: To exist in the mind and reality is greater than to exist in the mind alone.
C: Therefore, god must exist in the mind and reality.

The Problems:
1. It confuses the idea of something with the thing itself. God does not exist in the mind in the same sense as we mean by existence. The only way a thing itself can exist is in reality. It is not god which is in my mind but the idea of god. The idea of god in my mind cannot create universes and perform miracles.
2. It treats existence as a property. The argument poses all these properties of god and says that god would be greater if he had one more property: existence. But existence is not a property. It is the condition a thing must have to even exhibit properties. For instance, a green, slimy object is not green and slimy unless it actually exists. Existence cannot be treated as a property, it is what enables things to have properties.
3. It relies on a subjective concept of greatness. What is greater than another is opinion. One could simply reject the third premise that existence is greater than non-existence.

Pass.

And now for the free will defense:
"A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can't cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil. The fact that free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against God's omnipotence nor against His goodness; for He could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good."

The Problems:
1. Free will is falsified by omniscience. God's all knowing nature means that he knows the future of all people and their actions before you execute them. This means that you are inevitably going to do one thing rather than the other, there is no other possible outcome, and thus no free will.
2. God could create beings that freely chose good over evil. His omnipotence could create creatures with free will that simply did not freely choose evil.
3. It does not address natural evil. That is, things such as disease, natural disasters, and aging bodies. These are not caused by an action of any free being and thus is not covered by the free will defense.
4. God could intervene to stop acts of evil (at the very least gratuitous evil) before they happen without violating free will. He could allow beings to freely choose evil but stop them before they do it. Now if he did this in all cases then there would be no choice, but he could intervene in only gratuitous evil, such as by killing Hitler. Also, think this scene."

1. You're going down to the racetrack to bet on some horse races. Your buddy, a horse racing insider (owner/trainer/jockey/whatever) calls you up and says "hey, bet on horse 4 on race 2. I've fixed the race and there's no chance he can lose". You know the outcome of the race before it's even started. Did you in any way cause the outcome to be what it is? Will your betting or not betting on horse 4 affect the outcome in any way?
2. That's a contradiction. If you say God creates something that will, all the time, freely choose good over evil, it doesn't sound to me like he has a choice in the matter. It sounds like he's being forced, with no regard for whatever will he may have, to do good. That's not free. Heck, if he cannot choose evil, he can't even think evil thoughts! Forget stealing, he can't even think about stealing without a force beyond his control steering his thoughts. If you think that's free will, I quiestion your ability to read a dictionary.
3. If we take the problem of natural evil to be an attempt to create an incosistency in theism (ie "it is not possible for God to be omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good, yet still allowing evil in the world"), all that is required is to show that it is not an inconsistency (ie create a possible situation, however implausible, where the statement is true).
[collapse="http://www.iep.utm.edu/evil-log/"]It seems that, although Plantinga’s Free Will Defense may be able to explain why God allows moral evil to occur, it cannot explain why he allows natural evil. If God is going to allow people to be free, it seems plausible to claim that they need to have the capacity to commit crimes and to be immoral. However, it is not clear that human freedom requires the existence of natural evils like deadly viruses and natural disasters. How would my free will be compromised if tomorrow God completely eliminated cancer from the face of the Earth? Do people really need to die from heart disease and flash floods in order for us to have morally significant free will? It is difficult to see that they do. So, the objection goes, even if Plantinga’s Free Will Defense explains why God allows moral evil, it does not explain why he allows natural evil.

Plantinga, however, thinks that his Free Will Defense can be used to solve the logical problem of evil as it pertains to natural evil. Here is a possible reason God might have for allowing natural evil:

(MSR2) God allowed natural evil to enter the world as part of Adam and Eve’s punishment for their sin in the Garden of Eden.

The sin of Adam and Eve was a moral evil. (MSR2) claims that all natural evil followed as the result of the world’s first moral evil. So, if it is plausible to think that Plantinga’s Free Will Defense solves the logical problem of evil as it pertains to moral evil, the current suggestion is that it is plausible also to think that it solves the logical problem of evil as it pertains to natural evil because all of the worlds evils have their source in moral evil.

(MSR2) represents a common Jewish and Christian response to the challenge posed by natural evil. Death, disease, pain and even the tiresome labor involved in gleaning food from the soil came into the world as a direct result of Adam and Eve’s sin. The emotional pain of separation, shame and broken relationships are also consequences that first instance of moral evil. In fact, according to the first chapter of Genesis, animals in the Garden of Eden didn’t even kill each other for food before the Fall.

Some might think that (MSR2) is simply too far-fetched to be taken seriously. [If you think (MSR2) is far-fetched, see Plantinga's (1974, pp. 191-193) own suggestions about who is responsible for natural evil.] Natural disasters, it will be said, bear no essential connection to human wrongdoing, so it is absurd to think that moral evil could somehow bring natural evil into the world. Moreover, (MSR2) would have us believe that there were real persons named Adam and Eve and that they actually performed the misdeeds attributed to them in the book of Genesis. (MSR2) seems to be asking us to believe things that only a certain kind of theist would believe. The implausibility of (MSR2) is taken by some to be a serious defect.

===

What should we make of Plantinga’s Free Will Defense? Does it succeed in solving the logical problem of evil as it pertains to either moral or natural evil? In order to answer these questions, let’s briefly consider what it would take for any response to the logical problem of evil to be successful. Recall that the logical problem of evil can be summarized as the following claim:

(16) It is not possible for God and evil to co-exist.

When someone claims

(40) Situation x is impossible,

what is the least that you would have to prove in order to show that (40) is false? If you could point to an actual instance of the type of situation in question, that would certainly prove that (40) is false. But you don’t even need to trouble yourself with finding an actual x. All you need is a possible x. The claim

(41) Situation x is possible

is the contradictory of (40). The two claims are logical opposites. If one is true, the other is false; if one is false, the other is true. If you can show that x is merely possible, you will have refuted (40).

How would you go about finding a logically possible x? Philosophers claim that you only need to use your imagination. If you can conceive of a state of affairs without there being anything contradictory about what you’re imagining, then that state of affairs must be possible. In a word, conceivability is your guide to possibility.

Since the logical problem of evil claims that it is logically impossible for God and evil to co-exist, all that Plantinga (or any other theist) needs to do to combat this claim is to describe a possible situation in which God and evil co-exist. That situation doesn’t need to be actual or even realistic. Plantinga doesn’t need to have a single shred of evidence supporting the truth of his suggestion. All he needs to do is give a logically consistent description of a way that God and evil can co-exist. Plantinga claims God and evil could co-exist if God had a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil. He suggests that God’s morally sufficient reason might have something to do with humans being granted morally significant free will and with the greater goods this freedom makes possible. All that Plantinga needs to claim on behalf of (MSR1) and (MSR2) is that they are logically possible (that is, not contradictory).

Does Plantinga’s Free Will Defense succeed in describing a possible state of affairs in which God has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil? It certainly seems so. In fact, it appears that even the most hardened atheist must admit that (MSR1) and (MSR2) are possible reasons God might have for allowing moral and natural evil. They may not represent God’s actual reasons, but for the purpose of blocking the logical problem of evil, it is not necessary that Plantinga discover God’s actual reasons. In the last section we noted that many people will find (MSR2)’s explanation of natural evil extremely difficult to believe because it assumes the literal existence of Adam and Eve and the literal occurrence of the Fall. However, since (MSR2) deals with the logical problem of evil as it pertains to natural evil (which claims that it is logically impossible for God and natural evil to co-exist), it only needs to sketch a possible way for God and natural evil to co-exist. The fact that (MSR2) may be implausible does not keep it from being possible. Since the situation described by (MSR2) is clearly possible, it appears that it successfully rebuts the logical problem of evil as it pertains to natural evil.

Since (MSR1) and (MSR2) together seem to show contra the claims of the logical problem of evil how it is possible for God and (moral and natural) evil to co-exist, it seems that the Free Will Defense successfully defeats the logical problem of evil.[/collapse]
4. (Taken from here) Dammit I really want to answer this but I'm really tired and it's 5 a.m. here and any long response will probably be unintelligible, but what makes one sin worse than another? Take the example of a child molester. Of course, you say, he should be stopped from doing what he does. But what if, say, he's a good husband to his wife and a good father to his kids and an outstanding positive presence in his community, who just so happens to struggle with a terrible sin and tries to make up for it in any way he can? What if this man counterbalances the evil he does with good acts, while you yourself perform a bunch of minor sins that independently don't appear to account for much but overall add up to something significant and far more negative than our hypothetical molester? In that case, do you have the right to to judge the man? You're basically asking God to prevent a sin that somebody else is performing while stilll letting you do what you please. Does that sound preposterous to you, or is it only me?

Then someone actually brought up Pascal's Wager (LOL) so I commented on that.

"The Formulation

The Problems
1. It assumes the probability of god existing is exactly equal to him not existing. Self explanatory.
2. It discounts religions. Many religions maintain that the only way to salvation is to believe in their specific god. This shows that basic belief in god is not considered a guaranteed way to heaven, but their must be another wager of itself to pick a specific religion.
3. Belief is assumed to have zero cost. I'll just copy paste this, "For one thing, if you go through life believing a lie, that is a bad thing in itself. Besides that, there is more to being a believer than just saying, "Okay, I believe now," and getting on with your life. Serious believers spend a lot of their time in church, and contribute a lot of money as well. There's a reason why some towns have very affluent looking buildings for churches, and why large and elaborate cathedrals are possible: they're funded by folks who donate a tenth of their income throughout their lives to tithing. This is surely quite a waste if the object of worship isn't real. That's to say nothing of the persecution of other groups that's been instigated in the name of God throughout the ages. Also, in the US, churches don't have to pay taxes, which includes property tax. Property tax is what goes to schools, so all the land that churches own is sucking money out of schools. When "God Did It" becomes an acceptable answer, there is little incentive to continue exploring the question. More damaging, the "success" of this theory encourages one to apply it to other areas of human understanding. Practiced in this manner, theism can actively discourage human knowledge by compelling people to follow an arbitrary code of conduct, rather than one based on logic and reason."
4. It assumes that one has complete control over your own beliefs and can change at any time arbitrarily. For instance, I could not just say right now "I believe in god", it would be false. God is omniscient and knows your true beliefs.
5. It assumes that god judges non-believers completely apart from their actions (assumes the major religions are true I guess. ).

Pascal's Wager is bad and you should feel bad for bringing it up.

 

[ballin4life]

Your arguments against Pascal's wager fail to satisfy me. Even if there is only a .0000001 chance of being right, infinite payoffs imply infinite expected value.

A better argument would be to reject expected value in extreme circumstances. Otherwise we'd all pay our life savings to play the St. Petersburg Lottery

edit: I kinda wish we moved these arguments into separate threads because no one is going to read the mammoth posts that result

 

[ballin4life]

I can't give my own answer to this one, but the answer I've heard is "yes". As in, "Can God create a stone so heavy that he cannot lift it?" "Yes, but he'd then proceed to lift it anyways".

If this is the case, then by definition he wouldn't be omnipotent since he would be unable to make a stone that he couldn't lift.

It's a more convincing defense to say that he could create such a stone and give up his omnipotence. The only problem is that according to the conception of God that has been argued for, omnipotence is necessary to his existence, and God could not give up this property of himself without ceasing to be God, leaving the universe without a God (which would lend credence to the nonbelievers arguments). So they need to say that God is omnipotent in essence, meaning he can't give up his omnipotence.

Of course, this is easily remedied by saying that he is omnipotent only up to logical contradictions, and removing his own power is not within his omnipotence.

Of course, it doesn't seem necessary to me that God be omnipotent at all, according to the standard arguments presented. All he has to do is have the power to create the universe - hell that may even have used up all his power.

hmmm...I don't quite have an answer to this one. I'm gonna hafta pass.

This one is mostly due to lack of clarity about what it means to have power, but not use that power.

But it does give some additional support to my idea that the God defined by standard cosmological arguments could just be a natural force with no free will.

Nowhere in Christianity at least (not 100% sure on Judaism) does anybody say that God's the one in need of prayer. Church doctrine says that God has already called each of us, and we're the ones who need to respond. Furthermore, unbelief is not the 'only' unforgivable sin. You can be a practicing Catholic but if for one day you decide to go home, kill your wife and then shoot yourself in the head, and then you go through with it, don't expect to get to Heaven.

Why do we need to respond? Because otherwise God is going to throw us in hell... sure sounds like God's the one needing prayer there.

But the free will defence does cover this. If God showed a sign that caused every non-believer to believe, that's not really giving anyone a choice now is it? Can you truly love someone if you don't have the option to choose otherwise? The line I've heard is "God provides enough evidence to convince the believer, but not convert the non-believer" - but, either way, if he showed us a sure sign there still would be non-believers. case in point: Sister Marie Simon-Pierre. She was miraculously cured of Parkinson's (and I don't use that term lightly, her cure was, after five years of study and scientific analysis, deemed scientifically unexplainable) after praying to the late Pope John Paul II. And I don't want to hear anything from anybody about "the Vatican is against science", their criteria and methods for determining whether or not something can be scientifically explained is ridiculously strict. See this: atheistic scientist contacted anonymously to study bone marrow samples, and determined that the patient died of Leukemia. She learned later that her analysis had been sent to the Vatican for the case of St. Marguerite d'Youville's canonization. Said patient is alive and well (and Leukemia-free!) today.

Uh, it's still free will if you give more evidence. It's my free will to believe that Charlie Sheen exists - even though he gives a ton of evidence for his existence.

Also this quote: "God provides enough evidence to convince the believer, but not convert the non-believer" is ridiculous. 90+% of believing is being raised in that certain religion. You're telling me that because some people were raised in a religion that they deserve to go to heaven, whereas people in Africa who have never seen Christianity deserve to go to hell?

I mean, it's literally saying that if your "default" position is non-belief, you are going to go to hell since God doesn't give enough evidence to convert you.

Not sure what someone getting better from a disease has to do with anything. God of the Gaps argument maybe (since science can't explain it, it must be God)? Plenty of religious people have horrible things happen to them too despite (or even because of) their religion.

Sorry, I can't touch this. I'm trying to reconcile the idea of something being before something else with that of time not existing, and none of the sources I could find adquately cover that.

One of my big points is that even if you accept the first cause argument, the result is not necessarily anything like the usual notion of God.

Particularly, there is absolutely no reason to assume that the first cause has free will - and assuming that it does gives you a self contradiction when you wonder "what are the chances that the first cause would have that particular personality/will/set of desires?". The fact that a supposedly self-necessary being can have different properties depending on the personality you assign him is a ridiculous assumption to make. How can something be self-necessary if it could have been different?

(Source)

1. If one one-hundred-millionth of a percentage point of the Earth's biomass is enough for me to have this conversation with you, it's certainly nothing in the way of evidence against the fine-tuning of the universe.
2. Not necessarily. It just assumes that there's a chance of each possible value, not that any chances will be equal.
3. Just because some constants are linked doesn't mean that, given one, you can plug it into a mathematical formula and calculate others. If none of the brightest minds on the planet can account for gravity in unified field theory, I'm inclined to believe its strength doesn't correlate in any way to the nuclear forces.
4. Your point? I can't have two aces of spades in a poker hand, but that doesn't mean I can't have two aces, or two spades, or a 6 and a jack at the same time.
5. You didn't include the next sentence "Computer simulations suggest that not all of the purportedly "fine-tuned" parameters may be as fine-tuned as has been claimed. Victor Stenger has simulated different universes in which four fundamental parameters are varied. He found that long-lived stars could exist over a wide parameter range, and concluded that "... a wide variation of constants of physics leads to universes that are long-lived enough for life to evolve, although human life need not exist in such universes".[7] However Stenger's work has been criticised as having several fundamental flaws by other physicists.[8][9]". My source says that a deviation in the strong force of +2%/-5% would prevent stars (ie a stable source of energy) from being able to exist for any significant period of time.
6. The "only viable nonreligious explanation" for perceived fine-tuning cannot be directly observed and has no independent evidence in favour of it. How many scientific theories have been accepted without observation or evidence? Believing in multiverse theory requires faith that borders on religiousness.
7. I'm just going to quote this verbatim, but to get straight to the point, it's not all that amazing that the universe we observe is able to create and sustain life - it's that we can observe it in the first place.

2. What if the chances of the current values are 99.9999% then?
3. Just because it hasn't been done yet doesn't mean it will never be done.

The real defense here though is that you have no basis for using probability. Probability relies on having a sample space, a set of possible events, and a probability measure to see what the chances of each event are. In this case, you don't even have a sample space! You absolutely cannot make any claims about the probability of the universe existing, because you don't know what sample space gave this supposed random variable. It's like saying "What is the probability of Mount Everest existing?". It doesn't make sense.

One other thing I would point out that isn't intuitively obvious is that much depends on your prior probability of God existing. (Note: I don't claim you can come up with good probabilities for any of these things, but the above argument assumes you can)

Let G be "God exists", let E be "the universe tuned for humans exists". By Bayes' theorem

P(G|E) = P(E|G)P(G)/P(E). Assuming that God will always make this universe (which I think is unfounded - see my argument about God having a certain personality), we know that P(E|G)=1. P(E) = P(E|G)P(G) + P(E|~G)P(~G) = P(G)+P(E|~G)P(~G).

So P(G|E) = P(G)/( P(G) + P(~G)P(E|~G) )

The claim of the above argument is that P(E|~G) is small (the probability that the universe tuned for humans exists without God is small). But this isn't the only factor! If P(G) is even smaller than that (say, because we accept the arguments that God is contradictory), then we may still reject the belief in God even while accepting the fine tuning argument.

1. You're going down to the racetrack to bet on some horse races. Your buddy, a horse racing insider (owner/trainer/jockey/whatever) calls you up and says "hey, bet on horse 4 on race 2. I've fixed the race and there's no chance he can lose". You know the outcome of the race before it's even started. Did you in any way cause the outcome to be what it is? Will your betting or not betting on horse 4 affect the outcome in any way?
2. That's a contradiction. If you say God creates something that will, all the time, freely choose good over evil, it doesn't sound to me like he has a choice in the matter. It sounds like he's being forced, with no regard for whatever will he may have, to do good. That's not free. Heck, if he cannot choose evil, he can't even think evil thoughts! Forget stealing, he can't even think about stealing without a force beyond his control steering his thoughts. If you think that's free will, I quiestion your ability to read a dictionary.
3. If we take the problem of natural evil to be an attempt to create an incosistency in theism (ie "it is not possible for God to be omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good, yet still allowing evil in the world"), all that is required is to show that it is not an inconsistency (ie create a possible situation, however implausible, where the statement is true).
4. (Taken from here) Dammit I really want to answer this but I'm really tired and it's 5 a.m. here and any long response will probably be unintelligible, but what makes one sin worse than another? Take the example of a child molester. Of course, you say, he should be stopped from doing what he does. But what if, say, he's a good husband to his wife and a good father to his kids and an outstanding positive presence in his community, who just so happens to struggle with a terrible sin and tries to make up for it in any way he can? What if this man counterbalances the evil he does with good acts, while you yourself perform a bunch of minor sins that independently don't appear to account for much but overall add up to something significant and far more negative than our hypothetical molester? In that case, do you have the right to to judge the man? You're basically asking God to prevent a sin that somebody else is performing while stilll letting you do what you please. Does that sound preposterous to you, or is it only me?

1. If there is no chance that horse 4 will lose, then horse 4 does not have any free will. I don't know where the reset of your analogy is going.
2. It's not a contradiction. You're essentially saying that free will implies that you will sin. It's possible to have free will and still not sin, correct? God could have made humans and put them in a situation where they will have this free will and still not sin. Again this may go back to confusion about what it means to have the power to do something and still not do it. By your argument, I can claim that God isn't omnipotent since he can't make evil happen. If he cannot choose evil, how can you say he is omnipotent and has free will? Or even something mundane - if God doesn't make my calculator float around in the air, how can you say he is omnipotent?
3. Your source seems to be missing portions, because I couldn't figure out what MSR1 was referencing. But I don't think MSR2 is a good example for a benevolent God, since he is punishing me for things that Adam and Eve did.
4. Well, yes it sound preposterous because child molesting is worse than nearly any number of "minor" sins. I don't know how giving a convoluted hypothetical like this is supposed to help your point. There are child molesters that don't have any redeeming qualities.

 

[Nicholas1024]

My personal stance on the "Can God make a rock so heavy he can't lift it" question is that God can't make such a rock simply because no such rock exists.

 

[Theftz22]

I might get around to being able to respond to all of this at some point (LOL).

A few quick things for the people who asked.

@Dre: I wrote all of the parts that are not in quotations (and obviously I mean the quotes within the text, I put quotes around the whole thing to point out I was quoting myself).

@MK26: "Then someone actually brought up Pascal's Wager (LOL) so I commented on that."

 

[Ganonsburg]

My personal stance on the "Can God make a rock so heavy he can't lift it" question is that God can't make such a rock simply because no such rock exists.

Or that, because the rock is physical and finite, and God is spiritual and infinite, because of the rock's limitations and not God's, it doesn't work. Also, this (my source, basically).

 

[ballin4life]

Well, the real truth is you don't have a reason to assume God is "omnipotent" anyway.

 

[A Pimp Named Slickback]

But the free will defence does cover this. If God showed a sign that caused every non-believer to believe, that's not really giving anyone a choice now is it?

That's like the doctor not diagnosing you because that would deprive you of the free-will to believe what sickness you have.

 

[Dre89]

Underdogs-

I feel you misunderstand a few aspects of thiesm, such as omnipotence, but apart from those it was still a really good post.

I'll +1 you in the Jedi Council.

 

[HaiWayne]

Side note: Regarding infants and those who die before intellectual maturity... I'll be honest, I don't know what happens. I trust that God has some plan regarding them, but I don't know what that plan is. I understand that's a less-than satisfactory answer, but it's the best I can give you.

you should never make that kind of statement in a debate. "I dont know" is acceptable in a normal conversation, but in terms of debate, it seems rather silly to use that as a contention: to just admit that you don't have a good answer. Strictly speaking, you just forfeited the debate on God's existence by admitting that you cannot defeat the argument that God cannot be benevolent when we observe that " infants and those die before intellectual maturity"

 

[ballin4life]

That's entirely the wrong way to think about it HaiWayne. This isn't a judged debate competition. The point is to have a sincere debate about something. It's fine to say "I don't know", especially if you actually don't know.

 

[Dre89]

Besides, thiests have been writing answers to the problem of evil (which are called theodicies) for hundreds of years.

Also, one point I'll make is that omnipotence doesn't mean He can do whatever He wants and ignore the restraints of logic.

Potence is the ability to create actualities, which essentially means to create being.

 

[3mmanu3lrc]

@Dre
So, you're saying that omnipotence it's not "Having unlimited or universal power, authority, or force; all-powerful", which is what "doing whatever He wants" means somehow?
Then, what is it?

 

[Dre89]

He's unlimited in His ability to create being/s.

This is why some philosophers say God is not a being, but rather that He unites being, because if you attribute being to God you're contributing something He created to His necesary existence.

 

[ballin4life]

And yet you still feel content to give him a personality ...

Also can God create a rock so heavy no being can lift it, and then a being that can lift that rock?

 

[GwJ]

Stop capitalizing 'he' and other pronouns, capitalize 'god' if you're being specific; it's annoying to read.

 

[_Keno_]

ballin, they've already stated that this problem is more of a restraint on the universe/logic than a restraint on their deity.

So Christians, can your god do anything? Or can he only do anything within the bounds of logic?