Posted on 05/04/2014 12:34:25 PM PDT by Olog-hai
What you said.
If the God of the Bible exists, he is necessarily a God of morals and all your arguments fail.
Your challenge lies at square one.
They could change tomorrow or 100,000 years from now. It doesn't stop us from having a discussion in the here and now.
Epistemologically, how could you possibly know such a thing? You would have to have experienced everything that has transpired since the beginning of the universe (assuming that it had a beginning) to be in a position to know that there is no evidence for a theistic creator.
Haha. No, no no.
It's is a reasonable induction to make considering that there is, as of now, no evidence for a theistic creator. I don't have to have experienced every single moment in time to make the basic observation that there is no evidence for miracles, the supernatural, or a supernatural theistic God, just as I can make the same observation about Santa Claus, polytheistic Gods, the Invisible Pink Unicorn, and the Great Juju in the Sky. If you have evidence, then present it. But it is not my job to prove a negative based on a simple assertion.
I would simply note that your claim that morality has 'improved' assumes a standard by which morality itself is measured, but to what are you comparing the universe when you assume that there is some standard that goes beyond it, or that there is some aspect of it that is not as it ought to be?
I wouldn't say that the standard of morality has improved, only our understanding of it. There is some sort of standard that I think we are required to seek, but it is more complicated than saying that it's written down somewhere or decided by some central unalterable authority.
You've probably experienced it yourself when you came to the conclusion that slavery is wrong. You certainly didn't get that from the Bible, and Jesus never condemned it, yet somehow you know it is immoral. Explaining WHY you think slavery is wrong is more complicated than the childlike defense of "Because Daddy says so". That's why I said that figuring out morality isn't easy; it takes work. But anything worth doing always does.
Not at all. The case can easily be made that the God of the Bible does immoral things.
If he asked me to kill my kids or commit genocide (as he does of human pawns in the Bible), I would tell him to shove a lighting bolt up into his nether regions.
It’s not my purpose to make you angry.
And I think you know very well the likely emotional reaction your comments would have on a Christian.
In in our attempts to find truth we won’t let ourselves be sidetracked by petty interpersonal exchanges.
If we accept the reality of his existence, God is both the creator of the universe and the moral law giver. In comparison to his level of greatness, human accusations against God don’t really register on any scale that I can perceive. At the very least, it doesn’t make logical sense think he has the same accountability we have. Further, the Biblical understanding of God is that he is sinless. In light of these things, we should honor and worship God.
But arguing about the "accountability" of a celestial supreme being is mostly sophistry. What is much more likely, when looking at the evidence, is that the Old Testament was Iron Age man's attempt to explain a cruel, unforgiving world. They explained it by creating a cruel, unforgiving God.
A cruel, unforgiving world is what we would expect if the Bible were true. It explains how God’s enemy started the whole problem.
If the Bible were not true it would be mythology, and it would bear the marks of mythology.
One of the marks of mythology is inconsistency with history and with archeology. The Bible bears neither.
Virgin births, miracles, resurrection(s), gods fathering children, a global flood, messiahs, the underworld; it's very much mythology, and present in many other cultures.
The Bible isn't even consistent with itself, much less history and archeology. Israeli archeologists had every reason to find evidence for the Exodus, but even they were forced to admit that there literally is none. That's just one example.
If I were a religious archeologist, I would have focused on the saints rising from the graves of Jerusalem at the time of the crucifiction described in Matthew. It's a fascinating visual, and it's surprising that few Christians I talk to have even heard of it.
Egyptian chariot wheels have been observed at the bottom of the Red Sea.
The old Ron Wyatt hoax? Haven’t heard that brought up in a while.
The laws of logic are not based on my prescience. It they are not absolute, invariant and universal then they reduce to relativistic preferences for thinking rather than prescriptive requirements. You cannot even account in principle for your use of something as simple as sequential counting. You argue against abstract, immutable universals, not because your autonomous reasoning can rationally account for or justify your rejection of them, but simply because your worldview does not permit them.
It's is a reasonable induction to make…
Stop right there! It is evident that you don't even understand the unsolved problem of induction and the problem of the uniformity of nature. Read one of the pieces the erstwhile atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote on the subject:
~ Bertrand Russell, Limitations of Scientific Method
Cordially,
These are statements, but not really arguments. All I said was that I cannot predict whether or not the principle of reason and logic will change, morph, or be cast aside for something else 100,000 years in the future. As I said earlier, this doesn't keep us from having a discussion about morality now.
You argue against abstract, immutable universals, not because your autonomous reasoning can rationally account for or justify your rejection of them, but simply because your worldview does not permit them.
I haven't argued against "abstract universals", in fact you could say I've been arguing for one in particular. You are a master in the sophisticated argumentative technique known as "putting words in other people's mouths". You might be used to getting away with it, but not with me.
Stop right there! It is evident that you don't even understand the unsolved problem of induction and the problem of the uniformity of nature.
Induction is broader than just the scientific method. You and I ostensibly don't believe in Santa Claus or Vishnu; that's an induction. We don't have to have experienced every single moment in time to make that induction. The same can be done for a theistic creator, and the evidence points to my conclusion, not yours.
I have enjoyed reading this rather exhaustive thread. You have the patience of a saint. Unfortunately, you can’t argue logically with faith. Faith, by definition does not have proof, nor does it require logic.
I was disappointed by the ad hominem attacks of one particular self professed Christian. It seems to me that name-calling is not particularly useful.
Would you be disappointed if it turned out to be true?
If you mean Exodus being proven, that also wouldn't prove a theistic God, and it would conflict with the actual archaeological evidence which shows that the Israeli kingdoms were Canaanite in origin and not Egyptian.
It's an interesting story. Much like Romulus and Remus. But a story nonetheless.
If the truth of Exodus doesn’t matter, why do you spend time presenting your argument against it? As your first and only example?
There are two kinds of belief: belief in the fact of a thing, and belief in the ethos of a thing.
For example, even the demons of hell believe in the fact of Christ’s divinity—what they lack is a belief in the ethos of it. The latter position motivates them to lie about the former.
It's a good example that encompasses both the mythology aspect of the Old Testament and a lack of historical and archaeological evidence. Beliefs don't really affect facts. Something is fact regardless of whether people believe it or not.
I believe the key here is to allow people to believe in the ethos of God. If they don’t, then the fact of God doesn’t matter to them.
If I didn’t believe in the ethos of God, I would at least stop and contemplate why not.
One reason not to believe is that you don't buy the notion that the universe is built on top of a single, unalterable, celestial dictatorship in which one has no say or influence. Another reason would be that there's no evidence for a theistic God.
What reason could there be for created objects to have jurisdiction equal to that of their creator?
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