# Questions on Christianity (Again...) **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 30, 2010, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952 "2010-08-30T02:13:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![aigonz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4491bb/32.png) [@aigonz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aigonz)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952/141 "2010-08-31T23:06:31Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > > [@aigonz](#): > > > > And when would we rest? > > Resting is sub-optimal. It’s an adaptation due to the state of the world. It’s more efficient on a world like ours to specialize as a day or night creature and rest during the off-time. On a planet with a constant light source, we wouldn’t have evolved this way. > > And of course, that’s if we’re talking about evolution. For a reasoned, goal-oriented creator, adding in random stuff like night, free-floating continents, molten planetary cores, etc. are all needless waste. Once agian you are pretending to know the mind and purposes of God. Remember He set aside the 7th day for rest. Rest is an intentional part of creation. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952/142 "2010-08-31T23:08:30Z")
> [@aigonz](#): > > Man’s impression of God or gods does not define God. I didn’t say that it does. I said that _your description_ perfectly matches the description that one would use if he didn’t want to be proven wrong, and that if you met anyone doing the same thing for any other topic – magic, aliens, whatever – _you_ would disregard them out of hand. ---
**Author:** ![aigonz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4491bb/32.png) [@aigonz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aigonz)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952/143 "2010-08-31T23:11:27Z")
[quote=“Der\_Trihs, post:140, topic:551952”] > [@aigonz](#): > > We ‘know’ He doesn’t exist? > > Surely you understand the illogic of this statement? Nothing illogical about it at all. I know gods don’t exist for the same reason that I know Sauron and the Wicked Witch of the West don’t exist; they are fictional characters who violate the laws of physics and have zero evidence for their reality. I find believers in God to be just as silly as someone going around claiming to be a real Jedi Knight with Force powers. The claim that you ‘know’ God does not exist does not meet your own tests for truth. You cannot ‘know’ God deos not exist because you cannot proove it. Yoou can doubt, but that is all. You find belief in God silly, fair enough. But I, like many cosmologists and astrophysicists, find the notion that an ordered and fine tuned universe, that as Hoyle claims displays the appearance that “a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology”, has arisen by random events to abundantly more so. ---
**Author:** ![aigonz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4491bb/32.png) [@aigonz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aigonz)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952/144 "2010-08-31T23:12:30Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > [@aigonz](#): > > > > We ‘know’ He doesn’t exist? > > > > Surely you understand the illogic of this statement? > > Nothing illogical about it at all. I know gods don’t exist for the same reason that I know Sauron and the Wicked Witch of the West don’t exist; they are fictional characters who violate the laws of physics and have zero evidence for their reality. I find believers in God to be just as silly as someone going around claiming to be a real Jedi Knight with Force powers. > > > [@aigonz](#): > > > > 1\> We observe objective morailty. > > 2\> Humanity is incapableo f developing an objectve moral code. > > 3\> The objective moral law we observe has come from outside of humanity. > > What would this “observable objective morality” be? Assuming that there is an objective moral code, it certainly doesn’t come from any gods; if it did, it wouldn’t be “objective”. Nor (again assuming such a code exists) is there any reason to assume we couldn’t discover it on our own just as we’ve discovered all sorts of other objective facts. > > Nor does religion make people more moral; rather the opposite, religion is a powerful source of amorality and evil. The first rule of moral progress (or any other kind) is to throw out religion. Are you denying that there is an objective moral law? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952/145 "2010-08-31T23:13:20Z")
> [@aigonz](#): > > nce agian you are pretending to know the mind and purposes of God. Remember He set aside the 7th day for rest. Rest is an intentional part of creation. That’s a circular argument. “God created the world to be perfect, the world is set up to encourage sleep, thus sleeping is perfect.” What if there was a trait known as fnording, which is where a body disintegrates into a mist for a month then re-coalesces and lives as a normal, physical organism for another month. This trait is a result of a planet which has some quality which encourages it. Creatures on Earth lack fnording. Do you miss this ability? Of course not, because no such ability exists in our universe. And yet, it is an ability that God could have given to us if he had chosen. Why did he choose sleeping over fnording? Is sleep more perfect? You can’t say that everything is perfect, and then say that every time something is less-than optimal that less-than optimal is perfect. That’s just being daft. ---
**Author:** ![aigonz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4491bb/32.png) [@aigonz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aigonz)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952/146 "2010-08-31T23:14:59Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > > [@aigonz](#): > > > > Man’s impression of God or gods does not define God. > > I didn’t say that it does. > > I said that _your description_ perfectly matches the description that one would use if he didn’t want to be proven wrong, and that if you met anyone doing the same thing for any other topic – magic, aliens, whatever – _you_ would disregard them out of hand. Your arguments contain your (or mankinds) misunderstandings about God. You are close to adopting a straw man argument. What you seem to be implying is that God’s what we know about God is ‘convenient’. But this is nonsense. Much of what I would suggest we know about God is most ‘inconvenient’, at least in these PC times. ---
**Author:** ![aigonz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4491bb/32.png) [@aigonz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aigonz)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952/147 "2010-08-31T23:16:43Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > > [@aigonz](#): > > > > nce agian you are pretending to know the mind and purposes of God. Remember He set aside the 7th day for rest. Rest is an intentional part of creation. > > That’s a circular argument. > > “God created the world to be perfect, the world is set up to encourage sleep, thus sleeping is perfect.” > > What if there was a trait known as fnording, which is where a body disintegrates into a mist for a month then re-coalesces and lives as a normal, physical organism for another month. This trait is a result of a planet which has some quality which encourages it. > > Creatures on Earth lack fnording. Do you miss this ability? Of course not, because no such ability exists in our universe. And yet, it is an ability that God could have given to us if he had chosen. Why did he choose sleeping over fnording? Is sleep more perfect? Where did I say God created the world to be perfect? God created a perfect world. That is quite a different thing. Care to engage on free will? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952/148 "2010-08-31T23:20:04Z")
> [@aigonz](#): > > What you seem to be implying is that God’s what we know about God is ‘convenient’. But this is nonsense. Much of what I would suggest we know about God is most ‘inconvenient’, at least in these PC times. And how is that different from what we know about magic, aliens, and unicorns? It’s inconvenient for people who believe in aliens that there’s no way to prove the existence of aliens. I’ll grant that this is true, but it’s pretty lame as a proof for aliens. ---
**Author:** ![aigonz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4491bb/32.png) [@aigonz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aigonz)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952/149 "2010-08-31T23:24:40Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > > [@aigonz](#): > > > > What you seem to be implying is that God’s what we know about God is ‘convenient’. But this is nonsense. Much of what I would suggest we know about God is most ‘inconvenient’, at least in these PC times. > > And how is that different from what we know about magic, aliens, and unicorns? It’s inconvenient for people who believe in aliens that there’s no way to prove the existence of aliens. > > I’ll grant that this is true, but it’s pretty lame as a proof for aliens. It isn’t proof of anything. Neither did I say it was. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952/150 "2010-08-31T23:24:56Z")
> [@aigonz](#): > > Where did I say God created the world to be perfect? You said that the world is “perfectly tuned for life” by God. A world which was perfectly tuned for life would have constant light. You said that we don’t have constant light because God wants us to sleep. These two statements conflict. Either he wants the world to be perfectly tuned for life, or he wants people to sleep. Since the two conflict, only one can be true. Which? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952/151 "2010-08-31T23:27:38Z")
> [@aigonz](#): > > The claim that you ‘know’ God does not exist does not meet your own tests for truth. You cannot ‘know’ God deos not exist because you cannot proove it. Yoou can doubt, but that is all. Nonsense. That particular argument is just an attempt to put religion in a special category; people don’t demand proof of the nonexistence of Zeus or Sauron. Like god, they are clearly fictional creations that have no evidence for themselves and violate physical law; that’s enough. It’s only with modern, popular religion that suddenly that isn’t enough. > [@aigonz](#): > > You find belief in God silly, fair enough. But I, like many cosmologists and astrophysicists, find the notion that an ordered and fine tuned universe, that as Hoyle claims displays the appearance that “a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology”, has arisen by random events to abundantly more so. That’s a long solved problem with any number of solutions that don’t require a god. The most obvious being presuming that there are many universes and we re in one “perfect tuned” to produce life for the same reason we are on a planet “perfectly tuned” for life; otherwise, we wouldn’t be alive to ask questions like that. > [@aigonz](#): > > Are you denying that there is an objective moral law? Define “objective”. I think that there are basic moral rules that are simply the best choices to make given our biology and psychology. But that isn’t objective the way laws of physics are objective; different rules would apply to a sufficiently different species. ---
**Author:** ![aigonz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4491bb/32.png) [@aigonz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aigonz)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952/152 "2010-08-31T23:28:36Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > > [@aigonz](#): > > > > Where did I say God created the world to be perfect? > > You said that the world is “perfectly tuned for life” by God. A world which was perfectly tuned for life would have constant light. > > You said that we don’t have constant light because God wants us to sleep. > > These two statements conflict. Either he wants the world to be perfectly tuned for life, or he wants people to sleep. Since the two conflict, only one can be true. Which? ‘Perfectly tuned for life’ is very different from ‘perfect’. Man needs to sleep. The conditions of night allow us to do that. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952/153 "2010-08-31T23:29:33Z")
> [@aigonz](#): > > It isn’t proof of anything. Neither did I say it was. Then why are you defending it? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952/154 "2010-08-31T23:30:56Z")
> [@aigonz](#): > > Man needs to sleep. The conditions of night allow us to do that. So God didn’t tune the Earth for “life”. He tuned it for “life as we know it”. Isn’t that remarkably fortunate for God? I tuned your keyboard perfectly to be the keyboard that you’re using. ---
**Author:** ![aigonz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4491bb/32.png) [@aigonz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aigonz)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952/155 "2010-08-31T23:32:30Z")
[quote=“Der\_Trihs, post:151, topic:551952”] > [@aigonz](#): > > The claim that you ‘know’ God does not exist does not meet your own tests for truth. You cannot ‘know’ God deos not exist because you cannot proove it. Yoou can doubt, but that is all. Nonsense. That particular argument is just an attempt to put religion in a special category; people don’t demand proof of the nonexistence of Zeus or Sauron. Like god, they are clearly fictional creations that have no evidence for themselves and violate physical law; that’s enough. It’s only with modern, popular religion that suddenly that isn’t enough. The statement “I know God does not exist” is a definitive truth claim, beyond that of an hypothesis. The person who makes such a claim should be able to provide empirical evidence to support such a claim. No special case for religion required. ---
**Author:** ![aigonz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4491bb/32.png) [@aigonz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aigonz)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952/156 "2010-08-31T23:34:41Z")
> [@aigonz](#): > > Are you denying that there is an objective moral law? Define “objective”. I think that there are basic moral rules that are simply the best choices to make given our biology and psychology. But that isn’t objective the way laws of physics are objective; different rules would apply to a sufficiently different species. [/QUOTE] By objective I mean absolute, unchanging, not subject to the whims of man. ---
**Author:** ![aigonz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4491bb/32.png) [@aigonz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aigonz)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952/157 "2010-08-31T23:35:43Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > > [@aigonz](#): > > > > It isn’t proof of anything. Neither did I say it was. > > Then why are you defending it? I’m not. I was responding to you. ---
**Author:** ![aigonz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4491bb/32.png) [@aigonz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aigonz)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952/158 "2010-08-31T23:36:44Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > > [@aigonz](#): > > > > Man needs to sleep. The conditions of night allow us to do that. > > So God didn’t tune the Earth for “life”. He tuned it for “life as we know it”. > > Isn’t that remarkably fortunate for God? > > I tuned your keyboard perfectly to be the keyboard that you’re using. What you are conceding is that God is the best explanation. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952/159 "2010-08-31T23:37:30Z")
> [@aigonz](#): > > > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > > Nonsense. That particular argument is just an attempt to put religion in a special category; people don’t demand proof of the nonexistence of Zeus or Sauron. Like god, they are clearly fictional creations that have no evidence for themselves and violate physical law; that’s enough. It’s only with modern, popular religion that suddenly that isn’t enough. > > The statement “I know God does not exist” is a definitive truth claim, beyond that of an hypothesis. The person who makes such a claim should be able to provide empirical evidence to support such a claim. No special case for religion required. Yes, it is an attempt to make a special case. That’s why people pretend that there is a difference between not believing in Sauron and not believing in God. And as for “empirical evidence”; the fact that so many claims made about God violate physical law is strong evidence against him existing. As is the fact that so many such claims are logically impossible. And the fact that religions have a long history of being flat wrong. ---
**Author:** ![aigonz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4491bb/32.png) [@aigonz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aigonz)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952/160 "2010-08-31T23:39:21Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > [@aigonz](#): > > > > That’s a long solved problem with any number of solutions that don’t require a god. The most obvious being presuming that there are many universes and we re in one “perfect tuned” to produce life for the same reason we are on a planet “perfectly tuned” for life; otherwise, we wouldn’t be alive to ask questions like that. ‘Presuming’. My position is the God hypothesis is more plausible than the multiverse hypothesis. Presuming nothing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-on-christianity-again/551952.md?page=9)