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If a god exists, faulty universe or not, his intellect has to be greater that ours in the sense that he understands what he made --the universe-- better than we do. Allow me to get a bit more technical for a moment. Look at the universe as if it were a system; a number of interrelated, interacting parts with specific behavior. If you wanted to model the universe, the number of variables required to do so would be enormous, monumental. That's high complexity. If a god made the universe, then that high complexity, that enormous number of variables, has to be accounted for in him. And it follows that he has to understand the universe much, much, much better than we do.
Going back to the possibility of god being evil (and complicating the earlier example), I'm just not sure if such a claim can be made from an intellectually inferior position. I haven't given it enough thought. As I said in an earlier post, with all the misery we have to endure in life, it's highly tempting to reach the conclusion that yes, we are in a position to very well call him evil, but I still consider the alternative that we aren't. I suppose a conclusion on this matter could be reached by transplanting this question into a real-life, human situation. I'll give it some thought. And believe me, if he set out to give us cancer, it would be great for it to be fair to tell him to go eff himself.
Anyway, I have been trying to analyze this from the perspective of a hypothetical god, and you have been analyzing it in human terms, which is perfectly understandable. Of course, cancer sucks, as do all sorts of illnesses and health complications, and it's natural to feel utterly enraged at the fact we have to suffer these things, along with all the other problems in life. This seems to be a sensitive subject so perhaps we should just leave this discussion as it is, as I worry we'll just get tense and frustrated if we keep going.
Forgive me but an omnipotent being who settles for a botch job is hardly worthy of any respect.
Or bollocks? All your other organs are kept neat and tidy, tucked safely behind a protecting bone cage. But your balls hang there, swinging hazardously around protected by nothing more than a wafer thin layer of skin. Why? Because sperm needs to be cooler than body temperature.
This is really the best design He could come up with? Why not allow sperm to survive at body temp and then you could put your bollocks safely in with all the rest of your organs? Or if he's already signed off on the sperm design why not then make your scrotum out of bone like your ribcage?
And there can be no 'greater plan than us mere mortals cannot comprehend' about this. It's just shoddy workmanship. Your appendix (another great piece of design there, almost as essential as your coccyx) gets to hide behind the protection of a roll cage but the organs that are vital to the propagation of the species are there to be kicked, hit by a casey (remember them 80s kids?) in PE, or whacked with a carpet beater by a desperate Soviet agent.
And why two eyes, two ears, two kidneys, two testicles, two lungs but only one heart and one liver? If you're going to build some resilience into the system then two of the most vital organs wouldn't go amiss. I think I'd trade one bollock for a back up heart.
The whole thing is a shambles but then what do you expect with a bloke who banged it all out in 6 days. Even the Pole who did my bathroom took a week FFS.
I trust you've actually read the book on which you base all your outpourings and which governs your life?
'Thou shalt not eat fruit from the tree of knowledge'!!!!!!!!
It's the first thing he says to Adam & Eve for FFS! From minute one he doesn't want to risk them questioning anything because he knows it's all smoke and mirrors. Existing in a state of pure ignorance is what God wants for his creations. Once again his design is at fault as just don't put the tree there to tempt them in the first place and everything would be hunky dory.
IS THERE? PLEASE SHOW US THEN.
Specifically you need to prove:
1. Christ's body was placed in a tomb.
2. A massive stone was rolled in front of the entrance.
3. After 3 days said stone had been moved and the tomb was empty.
4. The stone could only have been moved by Christ from inside the tomb and nobody else could've done it (thus you also need to demonstrate that the tomb had 24/7 surveillance and reliable witnesses to Christ exiting otherwise a gang of scallys nicking the stone is just as plausible a hypothesis).
5. Christ then went and met his friends and strolled happily about.
6. He then ascended into the sky.
And you need to prove all this independently without reference to the bible which, naturally, is a compromised source given it's clear bias.
This is an interesting point for @Risico007 to try and address. There are many followers of different faiths all over the world who I am sure are as fervent (and many no doubt more so) than you.
Now obviously you simply know you are right and Christianity is the one true faith so equally obviously all those other faiths are wrong and their followers are going to burn in hell. But surely even you don't have such monumental arrogance to think that it's a literal impossibility that you could be wrong and they could be right? What if it's actually Muslims who are correct? Yes that might be something you don't want to even consider as a possibility but how can you rule it out? They have as much evidence as you and they believe just as much as you but given there's only one true God one of you must certainly be wrong so why couldn't it be you?
But I'll invite you to answer what I asked @Dragonpol . How does Jesus fit in the OT? Where notions of afterlife and eternal punishment are pretty much inexistant. Even if you take the Genesis literally nothing in the Fall of Man requires a Savior.
If God exists. surely, the universe is not faulty? How can God exist and the Universe be faulty? By defintion, he is the supreme being and he does not make mistakes? If he has produced a faulty universe, then he's not God in my book. Unless we now have a new definition of God? Some guy who is up there but has good and bad days. Some stuff is good, some stuff is faulty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Being
And if no one dies (who is to say what age is a reasonable one to live to) the earth would be over crowded within no time at all.
My beef is with a 'merciful God'. He was anything but in the bible. A bit of a bear with a soar head if anything.
At least he's leaving us alone these days.
"Who want's to live forever?"
I do like your 'them' and 'their' . After all we wouldn't want those lovely, screeching feminists to step in and complain that God is referred to as a male, now would we?
Got up with a hangover and decided that testicles would be stored outside of the body,
got destracted by an incoming prayer and forget about tectonic plates causing Earthquakes,
mishead a prayer from a child wanting an answer and give her cancer instead,
it does deal with many many issues and answers alot of questions that atheists have. But it does lead to the other questions of why spend so much time worshiping and praying to someone who is clearly not as supreme as they could be?
And are there any signs that God has leaned from his mistakes? Popping down to Heaven's library for some self help books perhaps on multi-tasking, delegation, attention to detail, raising an only son as a single parent or controlling ones temper.
Oh come on!
Anyone making that claim, either has a different interpretation of the word "evidence" than the dictionary, or is ready to be locked away.
So a mortal man, delusional to the point of believing his own "divine" origins, stood up from the grave?
And you're saying this thread is laughably bad? Well I guess you've just proved your point...
Actually no, not true.
- A good dozen fundamental particles.
- Four fundamental interactions.
Voila.
OK I can just about buy him having had a heavy night on the piss before he started (although you might think that before you embarked on creating everything that has ever existed and ever will exist you'd make sure you got an early night?) and hence a few little mistakes crept in. He's not perfect after all (except of course by definition he is).
But then he's had millennia to send us patches for these bugs and done sod all. Maybe at least just knock out Universe v1.1 as a free system upgrade which stops babies getting cancer? Would that be so difficult?
You have to conclude that he either doesn't give one solitary shit about us (in which case why respect him or love him?) or he is utterly incompetent in which case he needs to resign and I'm quite happy to take over. As a manifesto pledge I promise to make ending baby cancer, putting bollocks on the inside (or at least free cricket boxes for all men) and sending down some actual evidence for my existence as core policies for my first term.
If that were indeed true, countless academists, scientists, scholars, ... worldwide would have accepted it, written about it, given lectures about it. It would spread like a shockwave. Like with the discovery of the Higgs, gravitational waves and more, we would find tons of books, television documentaries, websites produced. Logicians, philosophers, teachers, doctors, ... would all gather to discuss the consequences and possibilities of these findings. A substantial percentage of these people are intellectually honest and would, in the case of indisputable evidence, not look back or stubbornly refuse to accept that which contradicts their personal feelings, but instead perpetuate new paradigms. Nothing ultimately excites us more than a radical rethinking of our present views on the universe, but only in light of new evidence.
The fact that this so-called "evidence", which allegedly supports one of the most heavily debated points of the past 2000 years, remains hidden in such obscurity that I have to find out about it in one of our threads of all things, means it's neither widely accepted nor true.
Well, that's a good question actually. Since the 1980s, scientists have been looking for one particular ultra-fundamental cosmic entity of which our so-called fundamental particles are merely less fundamental expressions. String theory is partially based on that idea. Sadly, string theorists have a lot of the math worked out already but haven't yet been able to experimentally verify the existence of these strings. And as long as there's no experimental evidence, we won't accept it. ;) Yes, we're a stubborn lot. :)
Particle accelerators are probing ever deeper into the heart of matter. We used to be able to just "see" inside the atom; nowadays we can "see" inside protons, which are 100 000 times smaller than the atom. Yet a more fundamental particle, like the proposed strings, would be about 10^20 times (100 000 000 000 000 000 000) smaller still. We would need amounts of energy equivalent of the Sun itself if you like to make a particle accelator probe that deeply into the heart of matter.
However, it is our lifelong dream to reduce our fundamental particles to one "parent" particle, and our four fundamental interactions to one "parent" interaction. Some say that at the end of that tunnel, we'd find a "one" of everything indeed: God. I'd say that if we can ever find the one cosmic force or particle or whatever, we will have effectively removed the last reason one could still have for needing a god. ;)
Start with..how do telephones work?
Did I miss something? Has Draggers finally found his 'evidence' down the back of the sofa? Or has Risible posted another video of scientific 'proof' backed by the Christian Televangelist Society?
I don't think that a complex universe guarantees a God that is intellectually superior and perfectly aware of the systems, phenomenons and beings he is creating. God is God, after all, he has all these creation spurring powers at his fingertips. What if one day he snapped his fingers and oops, there's Nitrogen. Or he sneezes and, oh shit, there goes the big bang that creates our galaxy, etc. My point being, a complex universe doesn't immediately invalidate the point that maybe God was just fooling about and made a complex universe out of sheer happenstance and repeated experimentation. Looking at all the planets in just our solar system that can't support life and comparing them to earth which is the only truly viable one for that at the moment, maybe the other planets were God just screwing around and experimenting because he had no idea what he was doing and only when he got to earth did he understand how to create a sustainable population of people in our solar system? Using a superhero metaphor here, I've never seen a hero who had powers understand them right off. Superman flew into structures when learning to fly, Spider-Man couldn't avoid sticking to things he didn't mean to after his bug bite and Flash had to make sure he didn't go fast enough to create hurricanes. They learned as they went along, as well God may have, or still is.
You say we can make basic deductions from our inferior human position, but I think it's a far leap to work from the position of treating God as viable and arguing that "he has to be" a genius of creation with everything he can do already figured out. If he is so skilled and understands the complexity of his works, why are we so alone on this planet and have no signs that the other plants have life inhabiting them? If God is all about worship and attention from his creations, why wouldn't he make more like us elsewhere? Because he clearly loves being loved. Or maybe he's making it up as he goes along, as fair a conclusion to draw as any other (with God, nothing is too silly to argue in theory). Like a kid in school trying to get a general credit, God takes Basic Chemistry for fun to see what he can do in the lab experiments instead of being able to major in the subject due to his massive intellect. I say this because I look at the universe and wonder what much of it is for? It seems more like the work of an improvisational God than one who methodically created it out of 100% awareness of his actions if we are to take this "God is real" hypothesis to its full extent. @mattjoes, you've lost me entirely then. If you aren't willing to take the first appearance of God into your thinking, you know, the book that spawned the entirety of Christianity and any ideas of God we have formed since ancient times, then there is nowhere for the debate to go.
You are making all these conclusions about God, his intellect and motivations, but are only brainstorming and dreaming them up if you aren't taking his bible origins as valid or possible along it. Because without the bible and its debut of God, we wouldn't even be having this discussion at all and wouldn't be able to debate the powers of God. The only reason you're able to debate with me about whether God is intelligent enough to create the universe and us is because the bible lays the claim of creation at his feet. The only reason you're allowed to call God "God" is because the bible did it first. So to have this debate you must address the bible directly, as you already have indirectly through arguing your points in the first place. The only reason you have a "general concept" of God is because the bible created it first, and the biblical God is the foundation of all we're discussing. It would be a bit like trying to debate the powers and morality of Superman without taking his first appearance in Detective Comics (or any issues thereafter) into any consideration while still ascribing to him the name and abilities that same comic provided him. By arguing your position you're already addressing the bible and giving it at least minor validity because your view of God is unavoidably colored by the original conception of God as the universe and people builder and given the very powers or title/namesake those early followers gave to their deity.
You say you don't put much stake in the literal nature of the bible (I applaud you for that), yet ascribe to God all the powers of creation the book does and also make wild assumptions about his powers and intellect as do his followers. This puts you in a possibly compromised position then, as an all-powerful and all-knowing God is easy to make moral judgements against (though I know you aren't chaining your wagon to a moral God, so this is no consequence to your arguments; again, I applaud you for not jumping to a moral view of God).
@mattjoes, I don't aim these kinds of counter-arguments against you in particular, as I can see that you're discussing God with more range and openness that I see the religious do and aren't rushing to make set in stone conclusions about him that you'd bet your life on; you think about things and make arguments to test out the weight of those ideas, etc. I'm simply throwing out my own counter arguments against yours and seeing what sticks. I've read your comments on the next page that showed me you were arguing from a richer and more intellectually substantial position, and I'll reply to them now... @mattjoes, these are the kinds of comments that made me say that you were applying more richness and intellectual honesty to your arguments than I would see from people with faith. I'm led to conclude that you're either undecided faith wise or, like atheists, enjoy arguing for either side of the debating line to mull over and cement your opinions regarding an idea about or concept of God.
I didn't make the argument about an intelligent God, but I agree quite absolutely with the two options you provide. If there is cancer and there is God then God either wants the cancer there or doesn't want it there. I appreciate your argument because at this point in the discussion the religious would attempt a whole Olympic styled routine of mental gymnastics to explain why option A or B is not representative of God's power, morality and love for his creations, or they would avoid the question entirely.
With these options in mind, you indirectly address a question I and @TheWizardOfIce (as well as other atheists) have asked before: is this idea or view of God worthy of respect and worship?
Your two points are the same points I have argued, either that God is a flawed creator unable to get rid of the cancer that he accidentally brought into his design, making him a bit of a bumbler, or that God meant to have cancer as a part of humanity's suffering, making him a bit of a bastard. Either option, whether it's the foolish overseer playing with concepts he doesn't understand or the malicious overlord who methodically designs and inflicts cancer, are unworthy of my respect and worship regardless of if he's real or not. Because I couldn't decide what is worse, a God so stupid he can't even get rid of cancer after he goofed and created it, or a God who always wanted it present in the first place. Daft negligence versus and unhinged thirst for power and control. Can't say I'd bend a knee and clasp my hands for either under any circumstances. I argued this above, but I don't think that's as airtight a position as you think. That's another massive conclusion regarding a human's understanding of God you're making as an admittedly feeble human with a relatively minuscule brain with which to form those opinions.
Following my argument that God made things up as he went along, supported by the scattershot and sometimes random nature of the universe, who is to say that he intended for all of it or any part of it? And if scientists think about the universe every day and have given names and functions to over a hundred elements, have discovered the laws under which our world bends and has made gradual conclusions about creation over time, maybe our intellect isn't as inferior as one thinks when debating God's own intelligence. Because if God bumbled the universe and didn't care to think about what he was doing, it's the scientists that are giving actual clarity and substance to that random creation and who may have produced more understanding or care about it than God did when he farted earth with the elements he might not have even cared to name (if he even knew their function).
(Not saying this is true at all, just giving a silly hypothetical in an already silly discussion about the silly God)
An argument could be made against this by citing the "high complexity" of it all, but using this viewpoint of an intelligent and knowing God, what is complexity to him anyway? He's God. If he is able to create things willy nilly he's already more powerful than humans could ever be, so why does the complexity of the universe have to immediately admit to a complex and intelligent God? Our view of complexity could be his version of banal, we are so lowly with our human intellect and inherently inferior conception of the things around us. If God views our concept of the universe's complexity as banal because he can create anything he wishes with the snap of his cosmic fingers, then the view of an intelligent and complex creator we're ascribing to him isn't right on. He's just experimenting, screwing around and watching us all marvel at how amazing we think he is when he's only having a laugh about it all.
"They think me creating their solar system and thousands of galaxies is complex? Ha! I could make a universe inside a universe inside a universe with them at the very heart of that complex system and their crumb sized brains wouldn't even be able to uncover that I'd divined it in a billion lifetimes, even if I gave them the resources to discover it. Complex! They must think peanut butter sandwiches are complex too."
Being small, meaningless specks in a universe makes us think of God as vast, complex and mysterious, but to be on his level could reveal that the adjectives we use to describe him are rather comical in how much credit we give him just because we're small, meaningless specks that are telegraphing our diminutive scope and impact. If we take the view that we are in a position from which we are unable to comment on God, we're really blowing hot air, aren't we? ;)
While it may be tempting for some to transport our hatred of suffering in this world onto a powerful creator we can blame for it all, the only reason we're here talking about this at all is because our ancestors first transported all their ignorance and confusion about the world onto a powerful creator and invented "God" to explain everything they couldn't while giving their people thoughts of comfort about heaven and a fear of hell to keep them true. We're talking about little more than a fictional character right now when speaking of God, more of an idea than a presence. Because what really is God? Not even male or female, clear or opaque, understandable or impenetrable.
It's far more believable to me that the suffering we see is random, not brought upon us by anything, and that our creation and purpose in this world is just as random and meaningless as anything else. It's much more reasonable that we're a happy accident and not a methodical creation, trapped in an ecosystem that wasn't designed for us any more than we and our ancestors were designed for it. It is far more plausible that the God of the bible is just the God of the bible, not the eccentric and enigmatic puppeteer behind the red curtain who knows all and does all.
All this time the religious debate over God and the bible is likely little different from a group of students debating the text of a novel in their book club. I think all of this is fairly silly, but let's just take the fallible God as the ultimate answer. First off, I think a false equivalency is being made between God and the Greek gods. The latter had a source of gender and some semblance of humanity despite their power, but God is this sort of genderless, empty space that really has no shape or form; some mystery. On the fallibility point, I don't see the followers of God as very willing to say that he was just like the Greek gods with their flaws and humility, admitting that he was no more special or worthy of worship. He's God, their guy and better than anything going, Charlie. The Alpha and the Omega, the peanut butter and the jelly, the beginning and the ending. Fuck Zeus and his pussy thunderbolts or Athena and her "wisdom." The Greek gods swim in the very pool God uses to piss in; their oceans are his urine. They are nothing compared to him.
In all seriousness, let me continue to discuss this "Fallibility of God" concept (Christ knows the religious won't concede this point an inch). If the bible, the writings God apparently approved for public consumption, build him up as a powerful and knowing creator who can craft us, the world and everything around us (on tight deadlines too, mind), are we to then believe that this view of God is just a farce is he's just as fallible as other gods? That behind the bible and the stories of God's amazing power he's really just a bumbling fool improvising everything he does? That the bible is little more than a PR stunt he mounted to save face, to convince his creations that he meant to create them and the world exactly as they are, when in reality he screwed up in spots by making cancer, killed a few babies in their mother's womb, and made one too many of his "children" maniacal, power hungry and greedy such that poverty, class warfare and genocide prevailed amidst the populace that suffered under his watch?
Because this fallible view of God doesn't seem to be supported by his ardent followers, people who can't help but forego any vestiges of logic or common sense, or even morality, to argue that God is for sure a stand up guy and totally not a fool who has no idea what he's doing while asleep at the cosmic wheel. The religious quite clearly don't want to hear this "God is fallible" argument and the moment you even suggest that their Daddy wasn't perfect you're instantly hawking a giant wad of spit on their beliefs. Just look at the responses of the religious in this very thread and their attempts to apologize for God or play victims themselves when atheists trap them in straight jacket arguments. In their minds God has to be perfect, he has to have a plan, because they need him to have a plan. Because if God screws up, lies about his power or distorts things then maybe the heaven and afterlife of bliss aren't all he said they were either, and that gets them all cut up because what is their living and dying for but to achieve that sweet surrender and eternal splendor?
It always comes back to what is owed them and what must be protected in the followers' minds, arrogant demands that fit in well with the other arrogant beliefs they hold so much stake in of God's plan for them and the cloud-laden promise of heaven that are never doubted by them no matter the pressure applied. They can't face the nature of the world and the dangers, meaninglessness and false promise of it all head on, so they have to invent a being who can supply all the meaning and promise to them with all the comfort and security that comes from never having to ask questions or think about anything. And if God has been ascribed any power, its source must surely come from these devout people and these devout people alone, those who cling to that symbol of false power while others brave the winds and rains of the world without need of shelter. It's the 21st century and we've got umbrellas; God can be retired.
This is the crux of it. Any sign of the religious coming out and explaining why they hold this guy in such high esteem?
I believe we've been very generous in saying you don't need to bother with evidence any more and we'll take the fact of God's existence as read, so at least address the question why you love and respect someone who is either utterly incompetent or a vindictive psycho?
Using logic (yikes that's a scary word isn't it religious folk?) for a second I suppose if you are a believer (due to to the TONS OF EVIDENCE OUT THERE) then you say you love and respect him out of fear. Given this is the bloke who drowned the entire population apart from Noah* in a hissy fit, like a school bully, you want to at least pretend you worship him for reasons of self preservation I guess.
God is basically Dalton: 'His bad side is a dangerous place to be.'
Also fellow atheists perhaps we're going overboard on the baby cancer, earthquakes and bollocks being on the outside stuff? Nothing's perfect is it? If you take the overall universe as a whole he really did a cracking job and these really are little errors. It's just nitpicking. Even OHMSS has the silly 'love chickens' stuff which I'm not crazy about. I reckon Empire would give the creation of everything in the universe a solid 5 stars even with these small mistakes.
It's just a shame really that he has never gone and done a George Lucas and come out with the Universe Special Edition where he has covered up the original flaws he made due to time pressure or budget constraints with a bit of CGI.
*Even this story has just struck me as ridiculous. Why is Noah the only one to have access to the cutting edge technology of 'a boat'? When it became clear the water was going to flood everything why did no enterprising souls load up a boat with a few tins of beans and a raincoat? It only lasted 40 days which even with a small amount of food is survivable. But no they all just stood there and waited to drown whilst Noah sailed off into the sunset. No wonder God killed them all and reset things if they were that stupid.
And I always find strange that statement about not taking the Bible as literally true. What then is "true" in it?
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@0BradyM0Bondfanatic7, I read you and I agree and/or see your point in some things, and not in others. I'll have to further digest your extensive thoughts with a glass of Bollinger on the side.
I am on the fence when it comes to the possibility of a god, but leaning more to the idea that there isn't. (And I still think you can speculate about God as a "general concept" not tied to Christianity, the bible or anything else. False as it may well be, I think the idea that a superior being created the universe is one that has intuitively arisen among human beings to ponder ever since they appeared, even before Jesus and all that stuff-- and yes, I'm aware this line of thinking may be dropped in the future.) I am considerably more certain that organized religions and their texts are just human creations meant to explain nature and provide existential comfort. This can be inferred from all the diverse religions that exist --each with their fervent believers convinced they're right and the others aren't-- and from the power of human self-suggestion.
Anyway, if you excuse me, I'll do as George Carlin says and go back to praying to Joe Pesci. Because Pesci. ;)
So the thread becomes a very interesting place for atheists to share their views and approaches but those are belief can't really grasp the basics so leave the thread or carry on chanting the same thing over and over again.
Those of belief can't afford to offer logic and reason a chink of light because, once let loose within the remit of religion, it just destroys the whole thing. And for so many, religion is either deep routed through brain washing at childhood or a life jacket to protect from the ocean storms of reality (or both) and to let go of this is genuinely terrifying.
Those of faith seem to be able to accept fact when applied to something that helps them (ie an airliner staying up) but with things like death, meaning of life or moral guidance, fact offers little or nothing and this is where religion really scores highly. It really is a massive emotional comfort blanket. If you were brought up without a comfort blanket, you never miss it and some have grown up and realised they can do without it but others still cling on with a vice like grip.