Religious tolerance

Originally posted by DragonFriend
LOL You would like it to be that easy, wouldn't you. That would certainly ease your conscience. But lets look at the topic.
In the Bible, Jesus positioned Himself equal to God (that's why they killed Him, for blasphemy). That claim was either true or not.
If true, He deserves to be worshipped as God.
If false, He either knew it was false or He didn' ...[text shortened]... oral teacher (a prophet) isn't an option Jesus left us.

Which do you say He is?

DF

Let's look at what we know of Jesus:

1. There is historical evidence of the existence of a man named Jesus
2. All "precise" history of the man has been "edited" and expurgated until it has met with the satisfaction of politicians and potentates who used it to further the tradition of "the Divine Right of Kings."
2a. If you don't believe this, check out the conditions under which THE KJV of the Bible (Supposedly the most accurate) was penned. What about the "gospels" that didn't make the final cut? Or, weren't those scriptures as "inspired?"

3. Christianity claims to be a "fulfillment" of Judaism. IT IS NOT. IT IS AN ABERATION!!!! While many claim that Jesus it the "perfect sacrifice" to fulfill all O.T. "types"--this is NOT so. May I point out NOT ONCE were we ever commanded to "WORSHIP THE SACRIFICE." Which, in essence is what Christianity does.

Just a thought from a former Christian...an ethnic Jew and a current humanist.

Originally posted by Gamerscb
Let's look at what we know of Jesus:

1. There is historical evidence of the existence of a man named Jesus
2. All "precise" history of the man has been "edited" and expurgated until it has met with the satisfaction of politicians and potentates who used it to further the tradition of "the Divine Right of Kings."
2a. If you don't believe this, check ou ...[text shortened]... a thought from a former Christian...an ethnic Jew and a current humanist.

Re: Bible and "Divine Right of Kings"

The canon for the New Testament was drawn up long before there was any mention of Divine Right of Kings; and certainly long before the KJV.

Re: Worshipping the Sacrifice

We worship Jesus because He is God, not because He is the sacrifice.

Originally posted by bbarr
Throwing a little tantrum because you don't want to do your homework just makes you look silly.

Cheers!

"Unnecessary" was not used flippantly, or without knowledge. In your first post, under #2, you cited unnecessary suffering. This has been countered, time and again, resoundingly.
In the post immediately before this one on this thread, I wrote that you deem unnecessary anything God creates outside of Himself. In that brilliant stroke of thinking, you just wiped out all of humanity, and arrongantly, to boot.
Somehow, it is un-Godlike to allow suffering on a human scale, even though the One most aggrieved is God! In your haste to judge whether or not He is OOO, you neglected the other attributes of His essence, namely, in this case, that He is perfectly righteous.
How does a perfectly righteous God reconcile anything to Himself that is not perfectly righteous?

Not wanting to do your homework? Study the integrity of God before you spout off about whether or not He fits your distorted vision. Cheers.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
"Unnecessary" was not used flippantly, or without knowledge. In your first post, under #2, you cited unnecessary suffering. This has been countered, time and again, resoundingly.
In the post immediately before this one on this thread, I wrote that you deem unnecessary anything God creates outside of Himself. In that brilliant stroke of thinking, you ju ...[text shortened]... grity of God before you spout off about whether or not He fits your distorted vision. Cheers.

Read the thread. The fun doesn't begin till page 12.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
"Unnecessary" was not used flippantly, or without knowledge. In your first post, under #2, you cited unnecessary suffering. This has been countered, time and again, resoundingly.
In the post immediately before this one on this thread, I wrote that you deem unnecessary anything God creates outside of Himself. In that brilliant stroke of thinking, you ju ...[text shortened]... grity of God before you spout off about whether or not He fits your distorted vision. Cheers.

No, you don't understand the term 'unnecessary'. As explicitly stated in the argument, the term refers to being logically unnecessary. An instance of suffering is logically unnecessary just in case its absence does not entail a logical contradiction. If you think that no suffering is logically unnecessary, then you thereby are committed to the claim that all suffering is logically necessary. That is, you are committed to the claim that for any instance of actual suffering, if that suffering were to have been prevented, then a logical contradiction would result.

I do not deem logically unnecessary anything God creates outside of himself, and nothing in the argument I gave says otherwise. Your claims about 'wiping out humanity', or whatever, shows that you even bothered to read the argument. If you had read the argument, you would know that the notion of necessity you are employing is not the notion of logical necessity that I am employing in the argument.

As was clearly stated in the thread, I am attributing to God the property of moral perfection. I leave open just what moral perfection means, so as not to beg any questions against the theist. In fact, I invite the theist to employ whatever notion of moral perfection they prefer. In fact, I invite the theist to employ whatever notion of evil they prefer. As was exhaustively discussed in the thread, the argument is constructed so as to be neutral between different account of morality.

Now, after you actually read the thread, if you have any objections to the premises of the argument, or to any of the definitions employed (be sure to see the modification, about half-way through the thread, to the notion of omnipotence spurred by LuciferHammer's excellent objection) then tell me explicitly which definition or premise you reject and why. We can go from there. If you can't point out which definition or premise you have a problem with, then I'm not sure why I should take any of your claims about this argument seriously.

Originally posted by lucifershammer
Read the thread. The fun doesn't begin till page 12.

Right, that's where you can find my defense of premise 2. Also, you can find the modification to the definition of omnipotence on pg. 15.

Originally posted by lucifershammer
Read the thread. The fun doesn't begin till page 12.

I had already read bits and pieces of the 36 pages, but went back to find page 12 specifically, at your recommendation. Nothing new there, either.
It's just a lengthy rehashing of the same tired argument, one which places far too much emphasis on the physical and precious little (I'm being overly kind, here) on the spiritual.
Without a sense of the righteousness of God, the absolute righteousness of God, one's sense of anything less is distorted. It's like turning off the light and then arguing about the colors of the painting on the wall.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
I had already read bits and pieces of the 36 pages, but went back to find page 12 specifically, at your recommendation. Nothing new there, either.
It's just a lengthy rehashing of the same tired argument, one which places far too much emphasis on the physical and precious little (I'm being overly kind, here) on the spiritual.
Without a sense of the righ ...[text shortened]... 's like turning off the light and then arguing about the colors of the painting on the wall.

Blah, blah, blah. Which definition or premise are you rejecting?

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
[b]I reject the existence of OOO God based on my conclusion that logically unnecessary suffering and evil exist.
Now that's a loaded sentence! What, in your judgment, would be a necessary (acceptable) amount of suffering and evil?

Irrelevant to this discussion, and irrelevant to this discussion. Put in your own definitions.
Totally releva asked the 'why' of suffering and evil, just the 'what is.' Shouldn't be too hard a task.[/b]

As others have already directed, please read through the thread I cited earlier to clear up your misconceptions. But, in the meantime, I want to return to my example yet again:

You have stated that God exists, and further that He is OOO. Well, if you really believe this; and if this belief of yours in not arbitrary and not reliant on secret decoder rings; then I presume that you can defend His actions in the name of the greater good, given whatever you take the greater good to be. Now, if your OOO God does exist, then He allowed the pain, suffering, and death of those babies that Sinnot-Armstrong describes. So for the umpteenth time: using your own notion of good, what were OOO God's reasons for allowing this pain and suffering, and how are those reasons necessarily concordant with the pursuit of the greater good?

Originally posted by LemonJello
As others have already directed, please read through the thread I cited earlier to clear up your misconceptions. But, in the meantime, I want to return to my example yet again:

You have stated that God exists, and further that He is OOO. Well, if you really believe this; and if this belief of yours in not arbitrary and not reliant on secret decoder r ...[text shortened]... ffering, and how are those reasons necessarily concordant with the pursuit of the greater good?

Where what 'necessarily concordant' means, in this context, is that it was logically necessary (not merely causally sufficient) to bringing about the greater good. In other words, explain how it is the case that there were no other possible actions God could have taken that 1) would have brought about the greater good, and 2) didn't involve the suffering of the Down's children. It is not enough to specify some good, and show that the suffering of the Down's children brought about that good. To answer LJ's question, it is necessary to show that it would have been logically impossible (entailing a contradiction) for God to have brought about the specified greater good without allowing the Down's children to suffer.

Originally posted by bbarr
Where what 'necessarily concordant' means, in this context, is that it was logically necessary (not merely causally sufficient) to bringing about the greater good. In other words, explain how it is the case that there were no other possible actions God could have taken that 1) would have brought about the greater good, and 2) didn't involve the suffering of t ...[text shortened]... brought about the specified greater good without allowing the Down's children to suffer.

Yes, precisely. 'Necessarily concordant' was probably not the best wording since that might be construed as being in reference to causal sufficiency, which is not good enough.

In short, Freaky, I am asking you to show that the suffering of the babies was logically necessary for the greater good to obtain.

Originally posted by LemonJello
Yes, precisely. 'Necessarily concordant' was probably not the best wording since that might be construed as being in reference to causal sufficiency, which is not good enough.

In short, Freaky, I am asking you to show that the suffering of the babies was logically necessary for the greater good to obtain.

Imagine two discrete and non-interacting universes, A and B.

A is perfect, a form of heaven on earth
B is less-than-perfect, a form of, well, earth on earth.

Nonetheless, both universes bear a substantial resemblance to one another. For example, there is a chessplayer called Pawnokeyhole in both (although the quality of his play in A is markedly better than in B). Let's call these chessplayers Pawnokeyhole A and Pawnokeyhole B.

Also, although B is less-than-perfect, it's reasonably good--as close to utopia, say, as is hypothetically possible to achieve on earth.

Suppose God created A, and say that is was very good, indeed, perfect. He was happy with his immaculate handiwork. But then the following thought occurred to him. "Well, it's good that universe A, with Pawnokeyhole A in it, exists. However, I can envisage another universe, B, with Pawnokeyhole B in it. True, this universe would not be perfect. However, if I don't create it, then Pawnokeyhole B will never exist. And that would be a shame because, although universe B is flawed, there could never in principle be Pawnokeyhole B unless I also created this flawed universe. And the existence of Pawnokeyhole B per se is sufficiently good, on balance, to outweigh the evil present in Universe B; or, at least, the existence of the totality of human beings, such as Pawnokeyhole, in Universe B is sufficiently good, on balance, to outweigh the evil present in Universe B. Hence, I will create universe B."

Question: Would this be a cogent line of reasoning on God's part?

If it is cogent, might God actually find it desirable to create all possible universe where the good outweighs the bad, in order to maximize goodness overall, and where much of that goodness takes the form of what might be termed "ontological goodness", the goodness of existing as a particular being, even if in an imperfect world?

An interesting feature of bbarr's argument from evil against the existence of God is that it holds God to a higher standard than many conventional theodicies. It takes seriously the traditional premise that God is both morally perfect as well as infinitely knowing and capable, and goes on to deduce that such a God would not countenance the existence of even a single instance of evil that was not absolutely necessary for some greater good to obtain. However, it seems very easy to point to instances of evil that ostensibly do not meet this stringent criterion. Hence, the existence of God, as traditionally conceived, is highly dubious.

In contrast, many other theodicies try to conclude that, on balance, the good in this world merely outweighs the evil--a still difficult, but perhaps more potentially feasible, proposition. The line of argument advanced above is an attempt to life easier for the would-be theodicist. Does it work? If it doesn't, what is wrong with it?

Originally posted by Pawnokeyhole
Imagine two discrete and non-interacting universes, A and B.

A is perfect, a form of heaven on earth
B is less-than-perfect, a form of, well, earth on earth.

Nonetheless, both universes bear a substantial resemblance to one another. For example, there is a chessplayer called Pawnokeyhole in both (although the quality of his play in A is markedly sier for the would-be theodicist. Does it work? If it doesn't, what is wrong with it?

Why wouldn't God just create multiple identical perfect worlds? Why bother with Pawnokeyhole B at all, if God could just duplicate Pawnokeyhole A?

Originally posted by bbarr
Why wouldn't God just create multiple identical perfect worlds? Why bother with Pawnokeyhole B at all, if God could just duplicate Pawnokeyhole A?

You beat me to the punch. Indeed, if this God is trying to achieve infinite goodness (as if goodness is measured in discrete units or something), then he merely has to create infinitely many A universes.

Originally posted by LemonJello
You beat me to the punch. Indeed, if this God is merely trying to achieve infinite goodness (as if goodness is measured in discrete units or something), then he merely has to create infinitely many A universes.

Right. This follows from conceiving of God as an utilitarian of some sort or other.