The Christian Bashing thred.

[LonelyPilgrim]

Well Rob, what you are refering to is called the Problem of Evil in theology. I'll skip the Free Will arguments for now and address natural catastrophy, since your post draws such attention to recent events.

Well, there are several ways to address this issue:

1) Demons and other malevolent spirits - Some would argue that such entities exist and exert an influence on the world that God does not seek to hinder because they too have free will. To be honest with you, at the risk of appear a nut, I have personally seen some pretty weird stuff that is best explained this way... such as levitating knives being thrown at my head. Not kidding. Grew up in a haunted house... but I'm guessing you don't believe in ghosts either, so let's not go there. Anyway... by and large, I don't buy this argument for 99.9% of bad stuff, especially something as easily explained as an earthquake/tsunami.

2) God is not all powerful -
There are a couple variants on this rather unorthodox view. The first I'll address, most familiar to me as an argument made by Rabbi Harold Kushner is that God is, in essence able to do anything, but not everything. In other words, He made the universe so big and so complex that He can't intervene everywhere at once. This isn't entirely inconcievable... it's just as if you or I made a model town, we could easily make a miniature model town that filled a whole house, and while we would have absolute power over any part of that town, we could not move every piece of it at once in an ordered fashion. Our ability to interact is limited to one action at a time. Now, presumably God would have a much greater capacity to interact with the universe, but that does not mean that He could not have created a universe that is so large or so intricate, or both, that it exceeds His capacity to constantly police every part.

I know that does sort of fly in the face of generally held views of God, but it depends in a way on how you define power. Go back to the model town comparison, you could blow up the house, and thus destroy your creation in one act... likewise, God could destroy the universe in a blink of an eye. In that sense then, He is still omnipotent.

At any rate, the obvious counterargument, and one I'm sure you'd bring up is that, "Ok, God can't stop all the bad stuff, why not stop some of it then?" Well, what would you expect... God stops the tidal wave just as it's about to reach shore? Why do that when He could just make the earthquake not happen in the first place? There's no way of being able to tell how bad things would be without God around, no matter how bad they are now. So to say that God should have stopped x disaster from happening is to assume that He did not stop disasters a-w without our noticing or being able to tell.

The second varient on this view is that God is all powerful, but since he created the universe with certain rules and laws governing its behavior, it would not be right for Him to interfere excessively with them. Sometimes bad things happen in the universe because that's just the way the universe is. The ground we walk on has to be solid enough to support us, yet that same solidity means that if you fall on it, you will hurt yourself. That's simply the way things are. The properties of the universe work out for the overall good, but sometimes they cause this little 'hiccups' that cause us harm.

3) It's really best for us if God leaves well enough alone most of the time.

Imagine if God were to intervene everytime a disaster were to happen... we would come to take Him for granted. We would know that we could build our houses on top of an active volcanoe because no harm could come to us. Life then would be pretty pointless. Isn't part of the enjoyment of life the triumph over adversity, the tension of danger that is always present? If that wasn't there, if there was no threat of famine or disease or flood we'd still be living in caves.

4) It's our fault really
This isn't so much a total explanation as a mitigating factor. Often we fail to do everything in our power to prevent tragedy. In fact, we often court it. The total lack of any sort of warning system for the whole Indian Ocean led to thousands, possibly tens of thousands, more deaths than there needed to be in this latest tragedy. You can not lay the blame for that at God's feet, that's entirely our doing. We build tall structures where earthquakes happen,... hell, we choose to live where earthquakes happen. We as a species often seem to say to nature "Come on, do your worst!" in the way we live and where we live. The scale of disasters is all too often powers of magnitude higher than it should be because of our own arrogance and carelessness. Once again, not God's fault.

5) We all have to die sometime...
Most religions have a conception of an afterlife. Therefore, being overly concerned with death is just foolish, as it is really only a phase of our existence, only the beginning really. And who is to say that dying in a tsunami is really that much worse than dying of some crippling disease at the age of 98? You're still dead. There's still either an afterlife or not. If so, then great, no problem. If not, then life would have been pretty pointless anyway, don't you think? It's not the dead we should be concerning ourself with, it's the living suffering. And we, humanity, can solve the problems of poverty and wrechedness that plague our world. If you are Christian then Christ makes it perfectly clear that caring for the poor and disenfranchised and the sick and the greiving is not God's job... they will get their reward from Him in Heaven. While they are here, it is everyone's duty to help everyone else. It is within our power, and if we don't do it, we have only ourselves to blame.

7) God is a personal God.
Especially for Christians, since Jesus came and preached the New Testament, God more or less gave up on the dealing with large groups of people as large groups of people idea, and now prefers a personal relationship with individuals. A one-on-one. So you shouldn't look for evidence of God in whether a tsunami happened, but in the miracle stories of individuals who were saved. God works with and through people, not the elements, and so you will find him in others not the waves or winds.

Conclusion: This isn't a problem... there are many reasons why and how bad things can happen in the world that do not disprove the existence of a good and loving God. And I could say more, but I'm tired and my brain is fried from saying what I have... I don't know why I get into these discussions, I'm not a philosopher or theologian... way out of my league...

[Rob Hearn]

Well, to somebody who hasn't given it much thought, or ignores science, it's not obvious that there isn't some entity pissing on us, or at the very least 'out there'. Although I am sceptical, I wouldn't rule out the latter possibility. When discussing things like the origin of life and the universe, the idea of an intelligent agent deserves a place at the table, albeit on a high chair, with a bib and plastic cutlery. What is obvious, if one believes in such an entity, is that it either isn't good, or it isn't powerful, or it doesn't care. It is obvious that the god described by the major religions does not exist.

As for the intelligent agent, it is merely very, very unlikely that such a thing exists. I suspect, within not too many decades, light will be shone into the presently dark corner where the remote logical possibility of an intelligent agent still lurks, and, eliminated by a empirical evidence, the possibility will be gone for ever. That has been the fate of religious assertions over the centuries as science has blossomed: a succession of humiliating retreats into the gaps in scientific knowledge, which are always shrinking.

Demons ... levitating knives being thrown at my head. Not kidding. Grew up in a haunted house

You're right lonelypilgrim. With respect, I think you're a nut. And that, by the way, refers to your entire post - it's all preposterous, and 'it's our fault really' stands out - not just the rib-tickling poltergeist reference.

[JAK]

What happened to point 6, LonelyPilgrim?

[LonelyPilgrim]

Yes, but for the most part those assertions were the folk-beliefs of an ignorant peasantry or were designed by the Church to explain phenomena or to perpetuate it's own power. The central claims of a religion such as Christianity, as laid down in the Bible have seldom been proven false. Obviously the Garden of Eden is a false creation myth, and fundamentalists who really believe reality was created in six days and women were really made from Adams rib have a whole lot of fast talking to do, because the evidence does stand against that.

However, science will never prove that Jesus was not the son of God, or that he did not raise people from the dead. Now that's not to say it really happened, just pointing out that the 'light' will never be able to prove that the events recounted in the New Testament, or in much of the Old Testament never took place.

The fact is, people like you have sought to elevate reason and science and undermine faith since the beginnings of the Enlightenment. Someone has always said, "Ten more years and it will all be shown false" "God is dead" etc... Well, it's been a lot longer than ten years since Nietzche died, and a whole lot longer since the Enlightenment began. God is still with us and will always be with us.

So your sole reason for rejecting the theory of a benevolent God is because bad stuff happens. Did you read the rest of my post, or the just the first point? Because if you even made it to the end of that point, you'd know I reject that explanation. But you don't mention any of the other arguments I put forth. Is that because you are lazy, or just too arrogant to think this is worth discussing? If you don't think it's worth discussing, why bother posting?

I'm sorry if you've had a hard life that's left you bitter toward God. I've had a hard life too. People have tried to murder me, I've lived through 8 tornados and 2 hurricanes, I've been in so many close calls with automobiles I don't want to think about it, I was born with a physical defect that the doctors said would kill me in months and I'm here now at 22, my parents had a bitter divorce, I've had second degree burns from a petrol explosion, I'm stuck in St Andrews over Christmas, along with so much other crappy shite I could write a book... so tell me, why is it not obvious to me that there is no loving God? Because, I can't say for sure, but I seriously think you'd have a hard time convincing me that your life sucks any more than mine has, and if you read some other threads on here you'd know that I am a cynic and a pessimist, but I do not think it is 'obvious' that God does not exist. You know why? Because I've been through some dang frighting stuff, and a lot of situations where I should be dead, but I'm still sitting here having this discussion. Among many other reasons.

So I'm so sorry you feel pissed on by a God you don't believe in. And as far as I'm concerned you can believe whatever you like about God, ghosts, me, or the dirt beneath your feet. But frankly, if all you are going to do is attack myself and other believers on the grounds that it is 'obvious' there is no God, and we are 'silly' 'fools' to think there is... Well I for one have lived too much, seen too much, been through too much to enjoy playing that game. If you absolutely believe that there can be no rational discussion about the existence of God, and your mind is already made up, then I'm sorry to hear that. Because that's pretty dang childish and arrogant and very closeminded. Oh, I'm sorry... and I starting to treat you like you've been treating us? But you must want to be talked down to, since that's all you've been doing.

Final word, if as you say you hate this discussion so much... then don't engage in it.

[LonelyPilgrim]

JAK,

There's a reason I don't do Maths...

[Prophet Tenebrae]

Ha, at the end of the day I think the teachings of Nietzsche are infinitely more useful than the Bible in the betterment of humanity - regardless of whether or not god exists.

[LonelyPilgrim]

Yes, the adoption of the idea of the UberMensch really did a lot of good for humanity in the hands of the Nazis... we're all so better off now without those pesky inferior race types hanging around, and of course the war seperated the real men from the weaklings...

I have to say he's one more dead philsopher that if he were still alive, I'd want to kill. Which he'd be ok with, of course...

[Rob Hearn]

Well, no reason to persist. I'm sorry to hear that you've been recently bereaved.

[Midget]

I've been in so many close calls with automobiles I don't want to think about it,

Stop, Look and Listen.

Or if you mean that you were in the car then as long as you had your seat belt on you'd be ok, always wear a seat belt.

And do think about it.

[David Bean]

I wonder if the Pilgrim is a philosopher - and if so, if I'll be seeing him/her next semester? (Your identity has been a source of intrigue to me since the 'muahahahaha' post on another thread...)

Also, given your comments on omnipotence, I wonder if you would like to comment on a point I made in a recent conversation with some Melvillite friends on this topic. I was arguing that there were limits to the omnipotence we can expect from God which owing to the rules of physics and logic that we may argue that He created: He cannot, for instance, create two bodies that exist at the same point in space and time, nor any object that is simultaneously entirely red and entirely green - yet these problems are not limits on omnipotence, but merely qualifications.

As far as events like yesterday's are concerned, I think of God in the same way as I think of David Attenborough producing a wildlife documentary. He sees the lion stalking the gazelle, and although if he wished to exercise it he has the power to prevent the predator from killing his prey, he refrains from doing so because he does not wish to interfere with the wider forces and systems at work.

[hr]"Fiat justicia ruat coelum (let justice be done though the heavens may fall)" - Judge James Horton (family motto)

[Greebo]

*sigh*

There I was thinking this thread had taken a better turn and it's all gone to pieces again.

[Rilla]

[s]Greebo wrote on 01:22, 28th Dec 2004:
*sigh*

There I was thinking this thread had taken a better turn and it's all gone to pieces again.



I agree!
Yes, some Christians are annoying, etc ,etc.

But we all (or most of us anyway) celebrate Christmas.

Let's all just live in peace and harmony and respect.

Whatever anyones beliefs.




[hr]
Anything War can do, Peace can do better

[LonelyPilgrim]

First let me apologize to Rob. I really ought to learn not to post in anger. I could delete the post, but that's not my style, let it stand as a testament to the follies of passionate arguing.

Anyway, as to my outburst, my temper has been on an incredibly short string lately, as I have had to reschedual my flight home again, due to my still not having received my passport back. According to the Home Office it's in the Post, so hopefully sometime this week would be nice. St Andrews is a ghost town right now, and it's starting to get to me.

To midget: Yes, I've been in the vehicle for the incidents in question, the only time I've had a problem as a pedestrian was with a fellow on a dirt bike, but since he was trying to run me down, that wasn't an accident.

As to seat belts... they do more good them harm, but don't trust them completely. They are useless in side impact collisions, and if you are really unlucky and your body moves just right in a collision they can crush your internal organs. But that's only if you're unlucky. Then again there are accidents of such horrific circumstance that the only thing that could save you is not being in them in the first place. So seat belts... good, yes, but not a failsafe.

Bean - Nope, not a philosopher. Ex-philosopher. I had philsophy as part of my degree for two years, before dropping it to do a single honours IR. The philosphy was just too depressing and made my brain hurt... not that IR is any less depressing, but one does get the feeling that it's a little more practical for real world applications.

[exnihilo]

Well, I'm glad you got angry, it saved me doing it.

Rob, I think you're trying to bait the religious people and don't mean a word of what you say. If in actuality your argument is "you're wrong and your fools but I can't tell you why" then you are as guilty, as has been said, as any fundamentalist.

As for the bad things happenning, I subscribe to David's argument. That God could do something does not mean that God should do something. Incidentally, however, before you condemn religious people for believing in omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent Gods, you might want to actually look into what they DO believe. Might make you seem less of an intransigent fool.

(btw - Pilgrim - the shift from distant to personal is the difference between the Transcendent and the Immanent God.)

[joe]

To be fair to rob, his position of saying 'you are wrong' is no more unreasonable than anyone who positively believes in god and lives their life accordingly (it doesn't just equate with fundamentalist christian positions, but conventional ones as well). The point, again, is that when we just rely on faith, any viewpoint is up for grabs- all are equally valid.
I would say that rob's position is far more likely, given that any actuality other than one with an omnipresent etc god would prove him right, and nothing we experience seems to point to that actuality out of the myriad of other possibilities.

[Haunted]

I was going to avoid this thread but i'm bored so heres my $0.02

Alot of improbable things can happen, thats all within the laws of statistical mechanics.
Say you were shot in a robbery, but the bullet was stopped by a crucifix you were wearing as a necklace. Divine intervention? Or simply an improbable event that is not impossible.
Also, say you prayed every day and night to win the lottery. Then one day it happened. Is it due to your praying efforts or statistical probability because you entered in so many times?

With my view on that covered, heres my afterlife thoughts. As of right now I do not believe there is such a thing as a life after death. As such, if one of the many religions turns out to be true then I will almost certainly go to hell, and there I will be eternallly grateful. Because I figure being tortured forever is a bit of a downer, but knowing the ultimate truth (if there is a god and such) is infinitely worth more. So although my flesh would burn (or whatever) I could take great solice in the fact that I would know the answers to the questions I couldnt answer in life. An eternity in hell is much better than just fading into nothingness.

In the words of the Vandals (nothing personal here)
"I don't want to go to heaven,
it's filled with pricks like you
I won't go inside the gates,
leave me in the waiting room.
I'm sure that God hates you too
he thinks your an obsessed fan
see how you are?"

[Prophet Tenebrae]

[s]LonelyPilgrim wrote on 23:35, 27th Dec 2004:
Yes, the adoption of the idea of the UberMensch really did a lot of good for humanity in the hands of the Nazis


Blah, blah, blah - I find it tiresome that people continously use the Nazis as justification that eugenics and Nietzschian philosphies are evil. Well, if that's your attitude you're and you're a Christian, Christianity is a bad idea because of the Crusades, Inquisitions, persecution of the Jews - oh wait, the Nazis did that too!

Just because an idea is put to an unwholesome use, it doesn't mean to say that you should throw the baby out with the bathwater.

If you're going to take issue with something, it shouldn't be because it was corrupted by people in the past - or at least if you disagree with that, then concede you're a hypocrite.

[exnihilo]

I think you may be missing his point, which was not that the idea was inherently bad but rather that to state that science and philosophy are the ulimate good and religion all bad is plainly wrong. Ideas as are corruptible by technocrats as they are by theocrats.

And to the poster who says that Rob's position is defensible - it is not. if he was prepared in some way to support it and/or argue it then it would be. I am, Pilgrim is, others are, we're all prepared to enter into discussion and to elaborate on our beliefs - that is hardly the action of an intransigent. Is it?

[Rob Hearn]

The reason I don't spell out arguments is that I've done so several times elsewhere, and can't be bothered. I've also come to feel, whilst having these arguments, a vague sort of embarrassment at talking about god and miracles as in the same breath as real events and entities in the world. the bottom line is, religion doesn't actually deserve any more of my energy, just as I don't waste my time arguing seriously about astrology or ghosts. If I hear one good argument in favour of there being a god, I'll change my attitude, but for now my interest in religion is purely at the teasing level.

The argument that we cannot have free will if god is omniscient is logically incontrovertible - if God knows (note, knows, not 'has faith') that I'm going to do something I have no choice but to do it - but religious people don't employ logic. I can cite evidence - or lack thereof - but for religious people evidence isn't important. It's all just so tiresome, and exhausting. So, I'm happy to admit, I get pleasure from ruffling religious feathers.

I wouldn't call myself a fundamentalist. All athiests would believe in god if he presented himself. Most would start to question their scepticism if some events occured that merited such a questioning. Athiests aren't people who have faith about there being no god.

Show me god and I'll believe in him. That's all any athiest can ask. Don't show us a sunset, or a compassionate gesture, or something lame like that, because we all know that those things have nothing to do with god as the christian religion describes him. Give us evidence, and we'll change our minds, because that's how our minds work.

Is the same true of the religious? Of course not. For some reason, nothing suffices as evidence that god doesn't exist, so the athiest preacher's task is futile. I submit that the earthquake is evidence, at least, that he isn't good if he exists. I submit that the lack of any evidence suggests - not proves, but suggests - that he doesn't exist. I will personally deliver confectionary to anybody who can give me a decent piece of evidence in favour of his existence - by which I mean, the christian conception of god. I will also deliver confectionary to any religious person who has the guts to say god might not exist, just as I am happy to say that god might exist, even though the evidence suggests otherwise.

edited for rephrasing

[Grandpa]

[s]Haunted wrote on 13:47, 28th Dec 2004:
I was going to avoid this thread but i'm bored so heres my $0.02...

[1]
Alot of improbable things can happen, thats all within the laws of statistical mechanics.
Say you were shot in a robbery, but the bullet was stopped by a crucifix you were wearing as a necklace. Divine intervention? Or simply an improbable event that is not impossible.

[2]
Also, say you prayed every day and night to win the lottery. Then one day it happened. Is it due to your praying efforts or statistical probability because you entered in so many times?



and I think it was Rob who wrote earlier that:

3
I hate this discussion. It makes me just want to shake my head. It's not that there's no god that gets me; it's that there's so blindingly, astonishingly, obviously no god. That people believe otherwise genuinely beggars my belief.


On these three points (as I have taken the liberty to label them 1, 2 and 3...)

1 Why would you be wearing a peice of metal a quater of an inch thick? or other bullet stopping material?? Are you in a warzone? Unlikely (but possible, yes it's true, you could be in a warzone, but then you'd be wearing a bullet-proof vest now, wouldn't you?)

2 It's just never going to happen...and I hear you sqwirm and scweem...."Oooo but it might, it might, it might" and I say you just like the metaphysician who likes to try to '''''prove''''' other people wrong via completely ridiculous, outlandish and very very very highly unlikely circumstances, as shown above (in 1). Your agenda is to win the argument by any means necessary to that end. Your method is neither rational, or, therefore, sound. If it were then we would see that your 'being shot' argument might rather be something along the lines of well, i was wearing a bullet-proof vest, and i got shot - only thing is I'd just prayed all day long, and after it happened I realised that it hadn't even left a bruise on my skin...how lucky!

(Minor point of info:
If you know a thing or two about kevlar jackets, you'll understand that the material contorts to stop the projectile, it doesn't actually 'stop it dead' so to speak)

Lastly,

3
it's that there's so blindingly, astonishingly, obviously no god

Well, on this point I would have been inclined to agree with you, up until about a week ago. But I've done a little thinking on this matter recently - purely out of my own interest and mind's workings...and have come to the point where I really do think that it is the NATURE of god (and therefore a few of it's(god's) qualities that we are mistaken with. Think about this: you are concerned with the idea of god, as I am. you are convinced that a PHYSICAL god does not exist, am I correct? If no physical god exists, then must it be that god is then some other sort of entity, because if he were not either (a)in existence, or (b) thought about AT ALL, then we wouldn't even have heard of him? But, as we HAVE heard of him, are we (or people who talk about him, in any way) trying to find a suitable word for an aspect of human existence which, it seems, is still slightly phenomenal?

For example, we say that a god exists, and the bible says that god exists ''3 in 1'', you know, the trinity: father, son, and holy spirit, (or spigot, as Mr. Bean once said, but we'll leave that for now....) but some of us (me especially!! please excuse the grammar) contend that if there was a 'god the father, and god the son' then he would have at least have, i don't know, come round for tea or something - he is meant to be omnipotent and all powerfull etc etc, so why didn't he come round? (Do you see what I'm getting at?

If he really was a physical thing, then we would have experienced it, or someone would have done in the 2004 yrs since he 'forsaked' his own son). But since he hasn't come round for tea, or made him'her/ITself physically known we can be sure that it doesn't exist in such ways (i.e.physics). But then, this begs the question "So what sort of entity is god?" I think, basically that it, the idea of god, is what each of us would aspire to if the world were a perfect place, and no one got killed, and everyone was nice to each other, and no-one tried to do anything at all that would harm any other person in ANY way possible.

But the world isn't like that, so the idea of a 'god' is put away, hidden from reality in this idea that it(god) is exactly that, a n idea of what we COULD achieve, what we could be. God is a euphamism. An idea given to us, not to control or brainwash us (although you'd be forgiven for thinking that the idea doesn't do just that to some people...)but for us to say "right then, what is it i'd do in such and such a situation.........i'd do this in a perfect world, but seeing as it isn't a perfect world, then god can only serve as a benchmark (a)if i want to be a charitable person and am not looking out for predominantly my own interests, and (b)accept that the idea of a god exists.

God is a benchmark.


er, the poll underneath doesn't seem to be working, so just forget it if it's not....if it is then give it a go....