Great Minds: Atheist Quotes Here’s some doubt for you from Einstein own words.
No one dies we are all eternal.
No one goes to an eteral hell, God punishes no one. What punishment we perceive to get comes solely from our own actions.
He repeatedly said he didn’t believe in a personal God. I don’t believe in a personal God. That does not mean you are an atheist. He said he would be an atheist in the eyes of the priest. I would be an atheist in the eyes of the church I grew up in. God is in all creation, intelligence directing that creation, wherever where you look is God, intelligent Love, recreating itself over and over again. That is what Einstein saw and felt, it is what I see and feel, and millions of others do also. You reach that point in your life not through logic or rational thought, but through your feelings, intuition, and knowledge.
(emphasis mine)
It might help resolve this contradiction if you explain what you mean by “personal God.”
Then I believe the discussion of your god is off-topic for this thread, which is about the actions and inclinations of the deity discussed in the Old Testament. If your god is not the god of the Bible, it is the wrong god for the purposes of this discussion.
That’s what I said! He rejected that, though I wasn’t able to make much sense of his reasoning.
I posted multiple times that everyone was to refrain from this stupid hijack.
This is a Warning to each of you that you are out of line. Take it to a new thread.
[ /Moderating ]
So we listen to the mods and stay on topic, o.k.?
Could an all-loving god have done something other than kill almost single living creature on this earth to show his displeasure? If not, could he have found a less hideous way than drowning?
Where are the warnings to Czarcism for his insults and personal attacks on me? For the “bating” comments made by him and many others in this thread, where were the mods then. Oh well, If you wanted me to quit, I quit. Another victory for the mods.
It depends a bit on how you define “all-loving”. Okay, it depends entirely on how you define “all-loving”.
Also one should first establish whether the god in question is clueless or insane - maybe he thinks that torture and/or drowning or whatever is no big deal if you awaken a moment later gasping and terrified in an afterlife. Yes omniscience would be an argument against cluelessness and maybe against insanity - but correct me if I’m wrong but this sort of omniscience isn’t explicitly in the text in question.
When people say that the God of the Bible loves everyone because “God is Love”, what precisely is the definition of love being used here?
Probably the usual one - he doubtless meant “God is love incarnate” in the same sense that I am brilliance and awesomnity personified. but that doesn’t mean the speaker was right.
The word of Mod says that “The presumption is that the Scriptures so referenced identify the actions of a particular being/Being in a particular way. Even if such actions are fictional, you will stick to that premise for all future posts.” Mivine declaration does not say that any of the spontanous declarations of opinion by God’s fanboys in that text are factually correct too. I don’t think.
We’d better hope not, because tales of God’s actions are contradictory enough.
Uhhh, what you’ve described isn’t really a game of dominoes…
Probably works better that way, since TTBOMK, Hell as place of eternal penal torment doesn’t enter into Hebrew Scripture/Old Testament text.
I can answer this from a Baptist perspective, as I used to be one. The idea that God is Love simply means… yeah. No one knows, at least not from a metaphysical perspective. What it means from a practical standpoint usually translates into a self fulfilling prophecy, as in, “If you believe God loves you then he does, and if you don’t believe he loves you then he doesn’t.” This is so because most Baptists are Calvinistic if not actual Calvinists.
I can understand that idea - it was one of the reasons I excepted evolutionary theory as a Christian.
The problem with this view is that it sets the stage - there’s very little wiggle room for free will (if there is any). It also makes me wonder why the dominoes were set up in this way as opposed to another way.
I’m not sure that I’m convinced by the naturalizing of miracles. It seems to me that if you strip the miracles out of the Bible, then you have a tough footing for claiming divine ownership. At the same time, it seems unnecessary if it’s all set up for accuracy in prophecies - it seems too ‘rules driven’, to confining, to have God set up the universe so that the natural coincides with the miraculous. That’s not to say it’s impossible or wrong or anything - btw.
The chaos is in a freely chosen action - if the choice isn’t coming from history, biology, or chemical configurations, then what is the choice being based on?
If it’s descriptive, then how could he move sub-optimally? Perhaps I have you wrong here, but it seems to me that if it were descriptive then that definitely locks into place the moves he could make. If it were prescriptive, then he ‘ought’ to make some moves, but does not have to.
Going back to your example, why you are an excellent player is because of your records (your ‘perfect’ playing). You would sacrifice that perfection the moment you played a sub-optimal move.
Yes, in my mind God’s goals have to come into the same game as his descriptors. I’m not sure that God could know what it is like to learn to choose between good and evil, which leads to the problem of how we do. It seems to me that God, because of the constraints of perfection, has less free will then we do in this regard.
As to creation being done - I am a proponent of the b theory of time and that probably marks the way I view “creation”. I’m not sure that a God on the A theory makes sense unless you are arguing that such a god has middle knowledge?
Fair enough. As to evil being avoidable, I think that it is - but I’m not convinced of it. So while I argue one way, it isn’t necessarily how I feel about the matter (I typically feel less confident then I argue - an argument should be about the best defense one can muster - at the end of the day though, I’d concede that “I don’t know”).
Perhaps there is always a lesson to be learned from such evils. I don’t think so, but it’s certainly possible.
Yes, you bring up a lot of good points. These things, in and of themselves, are not (at least obviously) evil or bad. I think that a case could be made that there is unnecessary suffering/pain in this world.
I’m reminded of a debate with the Internet Infidel’s head guy (Lowder, I believe) where he brings up the example of pain and says that it can be very instructive. If you touch a hot stove, the pain you feel informs you that you should remove your hand from the stove. On the other hand, if you have the Ebola virus, the relentless suffering you experience as your innards liquefy serve no such utility.
To me it sounds like someone would have themselves a gold mine if they could somehow replace all the simple carbohydrates in that cake with healthy protein, vitamins, and omega 3’s…
I understand your point, but I’m not sure it can be extended to all situations (such as the ebola example).
The other trouble with this theodicy is that it could create situations where pain/suffering is instructive and useful, but it can be prevented - but accordingly this theodicy would suggest it shouldn’t be presented.
In other words, let’s say you have the ability to stop massive starvation. Surely this would be a great good. Hold on a second though, if suffering exists to better the soul or to inform the soul, then if you prevent the starvation you are essentially making those starving people’s lives worse.
True, both questions rely on having beliefs about both places (events?).
I think that most philosophers would probably break knowledge down into a few categories. I can’t remember what they are, but basically, there’s factual knowledge, physical knowledge, and personal knowledge.
It seems to me that God (omnimax, atemporal, etc) could somehow have the first one - that is, God could know all true facts.
How God would have the second is a mystery to me. It is, essentially, muscle memory. So, for example, my body has knowledge of what it’s like to ride a bike. God, being immaterial, does not have this knowledge. A female could make the same argument, with regard to how hormones effect her (I bring up female in particular in case you want to posit Jesus as God).
The third type of knowledge seems impossible for God to have. Essentially it’s I know what it’s like to be me and not someone else. This would include qualia I suppose - what it means for me to experience something as opposed to what it means for you to experience it. So, when you experience pain, you have an intimate knowledge of how that pain is feeling to you. If I were to experience the same pain stimuli, I might feel the pain more acutely (or less, or whatever), but our experiences would be different and unique to us.
I’m not sure I follow how this relates to ‘learning’ exactly. I think I get that you are attempting to take time out of the equation, but I’m not sure how the analogy is flowing.
Cool, it’s been fun. 
Thanks, and the same with you and Meatros. It’s nice to have a religious toned discussion on the Dope that doesn’t devolve like I’ve seen so many others.
Fair point; however, I would say in such a topic as this, I would generally say it’s fair to just take God (or perhaps a god) exists simply because, as you point out, it’s a pointless debate otherwise. Of course, it makes sense to discuss which God we’re talking about, so we can establish if his claimed properties are consistent.
I do think they tie intricately together, I just think that this debate can be interesting by itself since, quite frankly, I’m not terribly interested in the other part since they never seem to go anywhere.
Okay, I think I see your point on this now, but I’m still not sure they’re really comparable. The thing is, with the brick example, one might be able to provide a scientific theory, photographic evidence, eye witness reports, etc. All of these things are observable and testable by science. In the case of experiencing God, AFAIK, there is no scientifically measurable evidence that can be provided that would be any different whether my account is complete accurate, completely false, or any state in between.
Thus, in the case of the cement block, one has potential to provide evidence for, but there is also existing theoretical and experimental data that contradicts the situation. In the latter case, there is absolutely zero evidence for or against. Now, one can make arguments about Occam’s Razor or burden of evidence, and I think those are meaningful if the goal of the person providing the account of said experiences is using them as evidence for why another should or should not hold a similar belief.
In this case, that isn’t my goal; in fact, I think anyone who uses their experiences to try to argue why someone else should believe in God will rightfully get no where. My experiences are only meaningful to me, just as the experiences of someone else are only meaningful to him. My goal here isn’t to try to convince you or anyone else that God exists because, as I’ve said, I believe that is a very personal journey. I’ve never been one to proselytize and, instead, prefer to either share my thoughts and beliefs when relevant (as they are in discussion) or when specifically asked. In this case, I’m simply interested in discussing the ideas in general because I feel it helps my understanding if I can successfully explain and/or defend those ideas meaningfully. I guess the only thing I’m interested in dispelling is the idea that God and loving everyone is possible.
This is actually a very good question, and I’m not really sure how good my answer is, but I’ll give it a shot, especially since it’s something I think I mostly settled, at least for me, relatively recently. I think I will have to paint a big picture first though.
The best analogy that I can come up with is one with which you’re probably familiar, which is the blind men and the elephant, one touches the leg and things it’s a tree, another touches the trunk and thinks it’s a vine, yet another touches the tail and thinks it’s a snake. The point is, God is much larger than we’re able to perceive, and our perceptions are distorted not just by his infinity projected onto our finite sense, but further distorted by cultural, experience, and all kinds of other things. As such, I think everyone’s perception of God will, in all likelihood, be different, sometimes very much so. So, to me, it’s really not very surprising that there’s so many differing views on God. In fact, I’m willing to bet that if we could conceive the true nature of God, that pretty much any honest pursuit of God will hold at least some truth to it.
So, for me, and why I have some more specific beliefs, like Christianity specifically, is that my particular beliefs are most consistent with how I’ve perceived God, fully acknowledging that my perception is only a projection and is distorted by my culture, environment, expectations, and all that. Of course, I think I’m right, but based on that, it’s probably a foregone conclusion that I’m wrong about a lot of things, even things that seem absolutely consistent with my perception of God.
And, thus, for you, you’re seeing the same thing, but a somewhat different projection and potentially very different set of distortions. So, I can only guess on why you perceive that he isn’t speaking to you. Perhaps he is speaking to you, you’ve received the message, and attributed the source to something else. I suspect that this is the likeliest case, where you’ve said you’ve had similar experiences and attributed it to yourself. And I think that’s fine, because you learned whatever lesson you needed to learn, God getting “credit” for it isn’t really meaningful.
Or perhaps he is speaking to you and you’ve misread it, rejected it, or out-right didn’t receive it. This latter case happens to me sometimes, and it may seem like he’s doing a poor job, but sometimes I think that’s part of the lesson. For instance, I specifically remember one difficult lesson for me where I was missing or misinterpretting parts of it for a while, but after I finally learned it, I was also able to go back and see how I had the opportunities to learn in subtler and, sometimes, less painful ways, and so, in the future, I could be more observant and learn then more quickly so, in fact, it was a lesson in and of itself.
In either case, whether one believes in God or not, I think it’s still a meaningful way to approach life, because we each always have a lesson to learn and sometimes get easier ways to learn it where, if we don’t, we get a more obvious way, and if we pay attention to the lessons, we can go through life easier.
I hope that perspective makes sense.
My point with the “red to the blind” was an attempt at an analogy of explaining one sense in another. That is, I can explain what red looks like with other visual cues, but if I result to comparing other senses, those comparisons are only meaningful if someone else has also seen red. It’s not like I can just say it’s hot, fast, etc. and expect that a blind person will somehow visualize the actual color, I can’t have any reasonable expectation that he’ll visualize anything (being blind), much less that specific color.
That is, I just don’t think there’s any meaningful way to explain or test something that is purely experiental. It’s one thing to say something is red, but if two people tried to explain what red looked like, how similar would their descriptions be? If someone described it in a way that seemed odd in comparison to everyone else, like maybe saying red is soothing, is their experience somehow less valid because it doesn’t jive with yours? How will he go about explaining to you how and why his experience is different?
I know, and I know how the actual game is played, but frankly, I know more people that “play” it the way I described than by the actual rules. What else would you call it? I’m happy to use another term for it if you have a better one. Does my usage detract from my analogy?
The idea of free will still works fine. For instance, one of my favorite mathematical concepts to play around with is randomness, but even still, with some basic constraints, it’s not terribly difficult to achieve emergent behavior even with random input. So, considering that all previously made decisions are constraints on future decisions, not to mention whatever the initial state and rules of the universe were, it doesn’t seem terribly difficult for me to see that an infinite being could achieve emergent behavior on a much larger scale.
The latter part is an interesting question though, and leads right into why I’m so interested in understanding God’s motivation.
It’s not just about aligning prophecies, it leads to all sorts of things. One of the philosophies by which I’ve lived for some time now is that there’s no such thing as coincidences. As, and I hate to bring up an Einstein quote after the earlier part of the thread, but he said it best when he said that coincidences are God’s way of remaining anonymous. Sure, it could just be a statistical anomaly, or confirmation bias, but what they could be if they’re not God isn’t the point. How is it ‘rules driven’ if I’m working on a particular lesson and events in my life transpire in such a way as to help me learn it?
I don’t have a good answer for this one. I do believe, as I’ve stated previously, that there is something more to us. Exactly what it is, what it does and doesn’t do, isn’t something I have an answer for because it’s intrinsically a part of what we are and that differentiation has never really served any really meaningful purpose in my own ponderings. I do think things like history and biological serve as heavy weights on alternatives and as distortions on perceptions which can also affect reasoning. In either case, I don’t believe it is a purely physical process.
Obviously, I don’t expect you to believe that, only that I can completely understand and, in fact, agree that without that, then yes, free will doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
I might have used the terms wrongly. My point was just in trying to say that his perfection is a description of his behavior, not a requirement upon them. And this is why my own “perfect playing” is relevant, I’m only perfect as long as I continue to choose optimal moves, and while I have the choice to make suboptimal moves, considering it directly contradicts my motivation, yes I’d no longer be perfect either, but now I’m making a choice I don’t want to make… sure I CAN, but why would I?
By the same logic, God has a particular motivation or set of motivations, why would he make a decision that he is absolutely certain will contradict his motivations?
I don’t agree with the idea that he’s constrained by perfection, it is just the “natural” consequence of being omniscient and omnipotent. He’ll always know which action will best align with his motivations, so why would he choose anything else? He’d either do something contrary to his motivations, which means he has different motivations than he does, which makes no sense, or he’s choosing to do something that is sub-optimal toward those motivations, which, again, undermines his motivations.
I’m not really seeing how that’s any different from us, the only difference is we can only guess at what action best fits our motivations.
TBH, I’m not read on the philosophy of time. From a quick read, it looks like b-series is more consistent with my view of how God perceives our reality. However, I think that, as temporal beings, we perceive our experience as an a-series, regardless of whether that is the reality of the matter or not.
This may just be a part where we’ll have to agree to disagree. I the problem is, these sorts of situations are never isolated, and often various lessons are there to be learned by many different people connected to the situation. In fact, in many ways, lessons need to be learned by “humanity” and not necessarily be a certain set of individuals. Unforunately, these sorts of things get into the nature of the soul and all that, and I’ve only touched on that in my ponderings, so I’m no where near prepared to really support meaningfully.
I mean, it’s easy to construct isolated examples, but I’m not really sure how illustrative they are so, like everyone else, I’m forced to examples from my own experiences, and while I don’t really have anything that compares to having my organs liquefy, I do have some experiences that seem needlessly painful, at the time, and in some cases years afterward, but later I see the lessons I learned and it’s difficult to imagine how I could have learned them “better”.
I can’t agree here. There “can” be lessons to be learned from suffering, but that doesn’t mean that lessons have to be learned that way. In is our obligation to act in accordance with what we believe to be true. Yes, while some people are starving, they may be learning something, but that doesn’t also mean that one who wants to end the starvation shouldn’t. Our lives interweave in such complicated ways, and it could very well be that the way the dominoes were laid out, the very way that starvation is supposed to end is by my hands.
It isn’t my job to try to determine what God’s big plan is for everyone and everything. Who am I to decide that starving people need to learn a lesson or not? It is not my place to pass that sort of judgment on other people, I can only do what I believe is right.
I’m not sure that those are meaningful distinctions for God, but I’ll follow along for a moment. Following your female example, let’s say we have a technology that could copy a particular memory or set of memories from one brain to another, and we were to copy the memories of a uniquely female experience to a man, could that man then be said to have physical knowledge of that experience and personal knowledge of that particular woman? If God is able to have all factual knowledge, and thus know exactly how such memories are storied, could he not effectively achieve the same thing?
This is getting into the structure of souls, of which I am self-admittedly quite shakey on right now, but I’ve heard it put forth by some that, in fact, we are in some way God’s way of actually experiencing and learning these things. Maybe this is how he becomes/is omniscient, by learning the totality of all possible experiences and being non-temporal, he’s “always” had them.
This sort of ties into the above. I wasn’t trying to illustrate that I think omniscience sort of natrually follows from being omnipotent and non-temporal. If one has access to infinite resources and time, then he inherently knows everything. That is, if there ever were a point he didn’t know something he needed to know, he could go figure it out, and by virtue of being non-temporal he has, from our perspective, always known it.
Eh, trying to work with non-temporal phenomena makes my head spin…