Quote from stu:
hey darkhorse, good to see you again.
Thanks for the clarification. I did feel that maybe there was a more subtle angle to your truly flying analogy than that which I read from it, your response confirms I wasn't wrong.
I understand you are saying (may I put it in these terms) there must be a downside in order that it is possible to know what the upside is. In the context of this thread and specific problems with religious certitude, I do not see any essential argument to reach such a conclusion.
I see axeman has successfully argued most rationally and succinctly, a sensible requirement that anything humans set above their own human standards, should at least come up to a basic understanding of what humanity considers reasonable standards, given the circumstance of life and human awareness, if for no other methodological intent than to be reasonable.
For a God to ignore this reasonableness and further - stand aside, in the face of what is manifestly needless pain and suffering, simply on the guess or assumption by religious apologists that 1. this God exists in the first place although there is no substantial explanation or evidence of it and 2. that it has some greater understanding above humanity's, although there is no evidence of any.....requires blind faith.
To diminish the standards set by humanity in that way, where a human being who stood aside in the same circumstances would be brought to book under socially enforced standards, is irrational unreasonable - and I would say - just plain wrong.
As far as 'religious' is concerned, and indeed as a norm, I would suggest a painless (ie non suffering) world would be both preferable and comprehensible. and for religion itself, less contradictory.
It is because of the conditions as they are, that there is suffering and pain, but consciousness which comes to terms with the astoundingly strange circumstances it finds itself in does not have too much of a problem imagining a world in which things were so arranged that suffering was not a necessary contingent on the ability to appreciating well being. A world where suffering and pain is not caused arbitrarily, unnecessarily. But if it occurred would ONLY be by the hand of mankind itself. This way suffering could still be known of, but avoidable.
Such a state of affairs might be one step ( a very tiny one) toward argument for postulating greater mythical beings, but circumstances as they pertain certainly provide strong and overwhelming evidence against the idea of a 'loving' God, even if one existed.
From reading many of your posts darkhorse, I have always considered and valued your contributions. You hold the dubious honor of being in my fav section for a most poetic and poignant description of market movement. That the presence of rationality and logic is displayed within your posts, to my mind is unquestionable. I remain confused however as to why you are apparently content to enthusiastically eject it all when doing God stuff.
well said stu!
i wish i had more time for these boards. i appreciate the clarity of your thinking and the high standards you hold me to.
in regards to the notion that an upside requires a downside, i'm not sure if there is an essential argument that can 'prove' the assertion any more than there is a single essential argument that can resolve the broader debate one way or the other. there are only myriad observations of reality as it stands; when we are looking to assign cause we are forced to speculate within the bounds of our rational faculties, just as when we try to figure out what happened just before the big bang or how certain properties of quantum particles seem to contradict the laws of time and space. as in a courtroom where bodies of evidence are presented, there is usually no 'argument to end all arguments' that silences all dissent, only a process of reasoning.
i respect axeman's general line of argument, however i think the flaw in the argument is that it is unintentionally anthropocentric and thus rests on flawed presuppositions. If God existed before man and God created man, then God is the measure of man and not vice versa. To properly conceive of a possible world in which God exists, it is necessary to conceive of God as being the first mover and the source of first principles. If God exists, it is not a matter of setting him above man's standards, below man's standards, or anywhere at all in relation to man's standards; it is a matter of reasoning how man stands in relation to his Creator.
I think part of the problem is that the question of whether God exists and the question of whether God is moral / worthy of worship etc. are distinctly separate and have to be asked separately. Many atheistic arguments tend to conflate the two and use arguments against one to attack the other (if God is not worthy of worship then why should I believe he exists, and/or if God exists why should he be worthy of worship). To properly debate the second one must hypothetically accept the first in toto for the sake of debate, which is hard to do because many do not realize the large number of hidden presuppositions that color their arguments below the surface.
If God exists in omnipotent form, is the source of all rational and moral faculties, and has ordered and created the universe in line with His precepts and desires, then He is the measure of all things whether we like it or not. To dismiss God's position as first mover and author of all things throws logical argument into disarray where theistic morality is concerned. Roles are significantly defined by position- it is right for a father to discipline a child, but not for a child to discipline a father, and so forth. There are many reasons why it is not consistent to assume that if God exists then He is assigned all the same rules and regulations that are applied to man. There is also the philosophical question of who is given authority to assign responsibility to whom, and who has claims on reality. We say things like "if I ruled the world then such and such" without considering that even hypotheticals have significant boundaries and that many things that can be imagined or hypothesized cannot actually be actualized.
Final point before I have to run, you may be able to conceive of a painless world in which man could live but I cannot because man is by and large the source of pain. How can a world of moral agents exercising their natural wills be free of evil when the option of choosing evil is necessary? And by what standard is evil determined other than the eternal and omnipotent first mover's?