Regarding the Existence or Absence of God

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Originally posted by thunderbolt


JESUS is the absolute truth! There, I said it.
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ok, prove it. that's all it comes down to buddy. but you cannot and never will. and even worse, all the evidence we have says that he is a complete fabrication! so suck on that!
 
Let me simply restate that your argument is till flawed.
Lets see why.

Originally posted by TriPack
Let me simply restate. I'm not saying an omnipotent/omniscient god is incapable of anything.


But to show all power and all knowledge he would have to make us all powerful and all knowing too. I don't think god is that stupid!

This is incorrect. It is an empty assertion.
I already discussed several examples
of how god could prove to us that he is omniscient/omnipotent
WITHOUT making us omniscient/omnipotent.
So this part of your argument has been proven false.


He could show us in such a way that we knew he had all power and all knowledge. I totally agree.

If god showed you a vision and opened your mind so that you could comprehend all that, how would you go about scientifically confirming that vision?


Visions are not worth anything scientifically/rationally.
People doing drugs see "visions" all the time.
It does not make them real.
People from cults all over the world have "visions"
and YOU would not believe them either, and shouldnt.

A hypothesis based on a "vision" is not falsafiable.
Such a hypothesis is not science.

But why would an omnipotent/omniscient god use something
as WEAK as a silly vision to prove his existence?
Doesnt make any sense.

Lets get back to your original example.

God shows up.
God does amazing stuff.
Scientists hypothesis this guy is omnipotent/omniscient.
Scientists come up with a load of test cases and test this dude.
The dude passes all the tests.
Everything is peer reviewed and replicated.
Nobody can find any flaws.
---------------------------------------------
SCIENCE accepts that this guy IS omnipotent/omniscient.


Pretty simple huh?

All other scientists are put through this scrutiny.
Why should your god be a special case?
As if an omniscient/omnipotent god would need
any help! :D


peace

axeman
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Originally posted by daniel_m
firstly, you are still convinced that an omnipotent being is POSSIBLE. i say this is rubbish, because it compeltely contradicts the laws of logic.

Ok let me in on the law of logic that this contradicts.

you say an omniscient being is possible. so you are implicitly saying that man does not have free will. if your god knows before hand everything i'm gonna do, i am nothing but a pre-destined robot. if he does not know what i will do, he is not omniscient.

Just because someone knows the outcome in advance doesn't limit the agency of the actors. You may say that makes us robots but in reality we are not because we have the ability to choose whatever outcome we desire, and there is no way for us to know in advance what our choices will be in the future. Thus at the present moment we are free to choose.


you haven't commented on your god's alleged omnibenevolance i guess because all the evidene suggests he is not.

How do you define omnibenevolance?

then you say there ARE miracles and point to the bible as evidence? my friend, that is not evidence, but pure hearsay! the bible is not admissable as evidence anyway, because it is your only source of information on god. therefore the truthfulness of the bible is exactly what is at question here!
WHY WHY WHY aren't i allowed to critically examine the claims the bible makes? your entire position rests on "the bible says a miracle happened, therefore it happened." HOW DO I KNOW THE BIBLE IS TRUE????? answer me that!!!!
sheessh...you people act as though the bible is the ONLY book that makes miraculous claims. religions THROUGHOUT HISTORY have made miraculous claims, do we accept all of them as true??? your logic suggests we ought to!

Contrary to what you might believe, my primary interest is not in proving to you or any other atheist that god exists or even that the bible is true. I'm making the assertion (thus far nobody has refuted) that those who don't believe in deity are illogical to hide behind science as a reason for unbelief. I state again that science is incapable of comprehending an all powerful and all knowing being and those who rely on science will never know the truth regarding deity. There may be other valid reasons for not believing but scientific proof or lack of it isn't one of them.
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Originally posted by daniel_m


Tripack, maybe you were absent when we through this whole omnipotence/omniscience jazz. omnipotence is logically impossible. whilst omniscience means that man does not have free will. and of course, the biggest one your god falls down on, by a country mile, is omnibenevolance.

if you wish to shield your idea of god from reason and logic by saying he is simply incomprehensible, fine. but the onus is on YOU to show how you came to have knowledge of the inherently UNKNOWABLE. otherwise, admit that if your god exists, he could only exist as a being with limited powers and limited knowlege.

how exactly does a christian gain knowledge of god? through the bible right? you would think then that once the bible has been shown to be a complete load of bullshit - as it has, MANY MANY TIMES OVER - that the christian would throw out his belief in christianity. but nooooooo, the christian wouldn't dare to do that...( i don't blame him, after the inhumane threats his god makes to him!). if that is not a textbook example of irrationality, i don't know what is.
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The concept of omniscience is not at all "logically impossible," and was never shown to be so as you claimed. In fact, concepts from philosophy and logic help to prove that the concept cannot be discredited by semantic games!
 
Originally posted by TriPack


Stu,

Let's say god showed us his omnipotence. Our understanding would only be able to comprehend a part of that omnipotence unless god also made us omniscient. I'm not saying god is unknowable at all, just that we would be incapable of knowing everything he knows or experiencing all his power unless we had the same power and knowledge he had (unless he made us into gods also). He could show us some of his creations and some of his power and knowledge and from that we would know that he is all powerful and all knowing without any doubt, and it would appear to us that we did in fact know everything.
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True. We, and our ability to understand the objective universe, are very limited!
 
It depends on your definition.
But since you assert these "concepts" exist,
why dont you tell us about some of them
instead of simply asserting they exist and therefore
daniel is wrong.

Until then...just another empty assertion.

peace

axeman


Originally posted by I Missed Boat


The concept of omniscience is not at all "logically impossible," and was never shown to be so as you claimed. In fact, concepts from philosophy and logic help to prove that the concept cannot be discredited by semantic games!
More...
 
Originally posted by axeman
This is incorrect. It is an empty assertion.
I already discussed several examples
of how god could prove to us that he is omniscient/omnipotent
WITHOUT making us omniscient/omnipotent.
So this part of your argument has been proven false.


I don't want to get too bogged down in the details because it isn't key to the whole argument. But let me say that if god has innumerable creations, how could he show you all his creations unless you also were made eternal? Anyway I concede that god can convince people that he has all power and all knowledge without showing them all or telling them all so this argument is a moot point.


Visions are not worth anything scientifically/rationally.
People doing drugs see "visions" all the time.
It does not make them real.
People from cults all over the world have "visions"
and YOU would not believe them either, and shouldnt.

A hypothesis based on a "vision" is not falsafiable.
Such a hypothesis is not science.

But why would an omnipotent/omniscient god use something
as WEAK as a silly vision to prove his existence?
Doesnt make any sense.

Well maybe it does make sense. If god provided incontrovertible hard proof that could be scientifically examined and that would convince everyone on the earth that he exists, then this act would by its very nature remove part of man's free agency.


Lets get back to your original example.

God shows up.
God does amazing stuff.
Scientists hypothesis this guy is omnipotent/omniscient.
Scientists come up with a load of test cases and test this dude.
The dude passes all the tests.
Everything is peer reviewed and replicated.
Nobody can find any flaws.
---------------------------------------------
SCIENCE accepts that this guy IS omnipotent/omniscient.

Pretty simple huh?

All other scientists are put through this scrutiny.
Why should your god be a special case?
As if an omniscient/omnipotent god would need
any help! :D


Again this would eliminate man's free will and we would be puppets on a string because insofar as we could not choose to not believe.
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Very limited? By who's measure?
If a snail were capable, I bet it would think our
ability to understand the objective universe it quite grand :D

Are you aware of some superior beings hiding somewhere
that are more capable than we are of understanding
the universe? Why jump to such conclusions?
Your are obviously guessing.

I personally have no idea of how capable we are
of understanding the objective universe.
But I have not observed any entities that are more
capable than man.

I'm getting really tired of all these empty assertions.
It amazes me how frequently and easily people throw out claims
with nothing to back them up.

peace


axeman


Originally posted by I Missed Boat


True. We, and our ability to understand the objective universe, are very limited!
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