They might. They might not. It still proves nothing about the existence or nonexistence of God; moreover, it doesn’t even suggest anything about the existence or non-existence of God, other than “It’s impossible to prove one way or the other based on this scenario.”
I know. However, I have restricted myself from all but asking questions, you might recall.
… and broken that restriction at least once, as I recall.
But okay, if you’re going to ask questions, feel free to ask a relevant one.
Exactly.
Look up the word plausible and you’ll see why you’re consistent with my argument.
Does forgeting once invalidate the idea?
I’ll be happy to verify that as soon as you present an argument.
My question was why God doesn’t do anything. Anything at all. Stopping 9/11 would have been nice, or showing up in Jerusalem to get the Israelis and Palestinians to live together like brothers and sisters, but anything would do. If this being is so vast and all powerful, it stands to reason that there should be some objective sign of its existence in the world.
Seriously I would expect a benevolent deity to present its codes for life and worship and morality in something a little more spectacular than books which were obviously written by human beings. Also an admonition for people to stop killing each other in God’s name.
How can you say otherwise?
Not at all. Just trying to pre-empt any assertions of piety you might make.
As for how I can say otherwise - It’s his premise the universe is imperfect. I do not accept that as a given. If he wishes to proceed to attempt to convince me, he must convince me, first, of his premise.
I don’t understand this reasoning. It would seem that everyone acknowledges that the universe exists. Also, that there are problems in existence. This seems to go beyond those claims. How is he the one with something to prove?
Nor has there been any evidence for/against the invisible dragon I have in my garage (thanks Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World,
[quoted here]
(http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/st-drag.html))
“You’re inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true.”
I would add: More “tests” have been performed seeking God’s existence than Sagan’s Dragon (like the rhyme?). More discussions, more people, for more years than can be counted.
Surely the lack of any positive test after so much scrutiny places God’s existence on the “myth busted” pile.
Neither you, nor I, nor any human being has the bird’s eye view necessary to fully evaluate the things you describe as problems. They may be necessary to the perfect design.
I never said that the inability to disprove God’s existence suggested it was true. Actually, it seems like you’re suggesting just that, about the reverse hypothesis - the inability of believers to negate the hypothesis that God does not exist doesn’t make IT true, either.
A thing is only lost until you find it.
If people are said to be able to imagine a perfect being then it follows that they are the judges of what is perfect and imperfect.
snrk Okay, so many problems with that I don’t know where to begin. First, your conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise, and we’ll leave it at that.
yay. My pink elephant has a friend.
So you believe that we can imagine a thing with a quality without being capable of judging that quality?
Can you imagine a “happy girl” if you aren’t the judge of whether the girl is happy or not?
I think you just claim things aren’t logical when you don’t like the conclusion.
I based my criticism on that definition because your “argument” was presented in a form that suggested you were making a logical argument. I can see why you would want to pretend otherwise now, because it is obvious that it was an invalid argument. Also, you seem to assume that Merriam-Webster presents its definitions in descending order of correctness or importance, and my picking of definition 3 was arbitrary or stupid. Think again. Here is definition 1 from the same source: 1 obsolete : an outward sign . I don’t think they put the best definitions first. I don’t know how they arrange them. When using a dictionary to deal with a word that has several definitions, we have to pick the one that seems best suited to the circumstances. I did.
The OP is still there for everyone to see. Everyone is free to judge what it is.
Now, again, stop nitpicking and argue for or against the proposition that people in a god-world would explain god’s nature and worldly events in the same way as a nongod-world.
Sure. Think of it the same way you might think about infinity. It’s a concept, not a quantifiable thing. To see how a believer thinks about God’s perfection, you need to accept, strictly for the sake of argument, some of the believer’s assumptions. These might include: we know God is perfect because scripture tells us so, we don’t know everything God knows, and we’re not sure exactly what He’s trying to do. So, is this an imperfect universe? We don’t know. God might think it’s just dandy. Proving that there are things in the universe that are unpleasant to us doesn’t prove or even suggest the non-existence of a perfect creator.