What is Z in your argument, flamegrilled?
The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday
by cofty 2596 Replies latest jw experiences
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flamegrilled
What is Z in your argument, flamegrilled?
The evidence for a loving Christian God.
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humbled
cofty, Christian theism has had other moments to wonder why their god has allowed death and destruction in the natural world kill people. The Lisbon earthquake and tsunami in the mid 1700's destroyed most the churches on All Saint's Day and yet let stand most of the red light district.So it is reported.
It looks to me that christian theism always has had to accommodate the mystery of god--it is only that some of us reject the theology that allows"god" to get away with that.
that is why I ran afoul of the JWs on the Sacrifice of Abraham story.
There was no reconciling this with the rest of the scriptures.
The struggle I have, and others is to allow for a higher being that is not the one we've been told exists.
(I'm offline for the next few hours--interested in any comments from anyone:) Maeve
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flamegrilled
cofty, Christian theism has had other moments to wonder why their god has allowed death and destruction in the natural world kill people. The Lisbon earthquake and tsunami in the mid 1700's destroyed most the churches on All Saint's Day and yet let stand most of the red light district.So it is reported.
This is why I made the point that the numbers are irrelevant. Cofty makes much of the statistics of the Asian tsunami as if the 250K clinches the point of reason. What if it were 150K? What if it were 10? It makes no difference to the question, nor to the information available to us.
If 1 person suffers and dies due to what Cofty calls a "natural evil" then the question remains the same. Death by old age is surely a "natural evil" by this reasoning.
People die. Is this God's intent? The Bible says no. Can we fully comprehend why it occurs right now? Some people say yes, the Bible fully explains it. Personally I disagree with that. The Bible partially explains it, and I do not dismiss the information that is there, but like the pet that cannot fully comprehend the big picture I accept that there is some information that is outside of my range right now.
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tec
Tammy manipulated you to cause trouble as usual.
Give it a rest Cofty. I didn't manipulate anyone into anything; that is an insult to Outlaw and to me; and Outlaw didn't cause any trouble... the trouble was already here from certain accusations.
As for the 'god should have done it' argument... we're just going in circles. You say 'god should have done it'... I ask 'how'... you say he should have if he is omnipotent... and that makes no sense because you are NOT omnipotent... so again, I ask how do YOU know what should have been done over Him?
So we will have to disagree on that point. Because going in circles is contributing nothing.
Peace,
tammy
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Apognophos
Apog - Ethics are not a matter of popular opinion.
Did you just mentally regress to your evangelical period for a moment there? I'm sure you didn't mean this... but in case you did... from where do ethics come, if not popular opinion?
This answer requires that we unhitch the word "love" from any meaningful definition. We may think we know what love means but god demonstrates that we have not the slightest idea.
I thought that the analogy some posters made was a fair answer -- that an animal or child might have to undergo some painful procedure that's for their good even if they don't understand the reason. Did you answer that analogy?
Love could just as easily mean the capricious annihilation of a quarter of a million innocent people.
"Capricious" implies intent, doesn't it? The argument being made here is that God allows things to happen but does not cause them. There is a significant difference here, though I think you are denying that there is.
It destroys our ability to make moral judgements.
God never told us to do as he does, did he? Where does the Bible have God saying, "Follow my example"? God's ways are God's. He gave (if you believe the Bible) commands to men based on what men needed to know and do. Among other concessions to human nature, allowing the Jews to have a king, and giving the second set of ten commandments when the first were deemed insufficient. The laws that men are supposed to follow are the ones given by God; since we do not have the abilities and knowledge that he does, we are not in a position to say that his ethics are different from ours.
If god is love, everything he does must be motivated by love, even when he judges. Love is not a hat he can take off for a while and replace with one labelled "vengeance".
It's difficult to respond to this because I don't know what vengeance you're talking about, but I think you might be referring to Biblical accounts of God dealing justice to sinners. Punishing the sinful is a loving act towards God's followers. Moreover, God does not promise to show love to everyone, including those who willfully sin against him. He loved "the world" enough to give his Son as a sacrifice, but this was obviously love in the collective sense. No Bible writer implies that even the willfully wicked are deserving of God's love.
Ethics become a matter of divine fiat and the value of human life is trivialised.
As opposed to the scientific way of looking at this, where ethics is a matter of popular fiat and the value of human life is the same as any animal, whether a moose or a fly. Yes, atheism makes things much better!
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flamegrilled
I'd like to draw on the Louie CK incident (referred to by Humbled) to present my reasoning in another way:
Dog 1: My owner punched me in the face, threw foul tasting liquid in my mouth and nose, and watched while I choked and threw up.
Dog 2: What a bast#$rd
Dog 1: I know. It PROVES that I cannot possibly have a loving owner.
Would Dog 1 be logically correct?
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besty
resorting to 'we don't know what we don't know' therefore anything is possible is pretty lame
apeals to mathematical-grade logical proof can never apply to this debate, or any other non-mathematical argument.
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flamegrilled
besty
I guess that was aimed at me.
What is the logical alternative? We either claim that we know everything (in which case it's pretty clear that the claimant is a fool), or we deal in some way with the fact that we don't know everything.
The two ways to handle that are:
1) Dismiss everything we don't know as irrelevant.
2) Acknowledge that some of what we don't know might be relevant.
Which is it? If it's #1 then on what basis is that sound?
You might hate my analogy of the pet. It might be intellectually revolting to you. But that is not important. The only question is whether the line of reasoning is valid.
If it is, then Cofty's assertions as to the fatal blow to Christian theism are null and void.
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Simon
Some people say yes, the Bible fully explains it. Personally I disagree with that. The Bible partially explains it, and I do not dismiss the information that is there, but like the pet that cannot fully comprehend the big picture I accept that there is some information that is outside of my range right now.
Well of course it provides a "partial explanation" - books like the bible were written precisely to provide some explanation to things they didn't have explanations for.
Of course none of their explanations make any sense ... but why is that surprising? They were written by desert dwelling nomads thousands of years ago who didn't have a fraction of the knowledge that most grade school kids now possess.
We're not stupid. We're not pets. We're sentient beings who can reason.
No where in the bible is any explanation for anything that now corresponds to known facts.
Throw it in the trash or put it in the fantasy section where it belongs. Just don't try to pretend it makes sense and we're not smart enough to understand it.
If it's meant to be a divine guidebook then doesn't the fact that it's vague, unintelligible and factually incorrect make him a liar or else incompetent?
Most of us have outgrown god, the rest still use him as a mental crutch to cope with reality.