7
   

God is good but there is still suffering.

 
 
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Tue 8 Dec, 2015 06:20 pm
@FBM,
I'm a reckless bastard, my "god" although existent is sort of dead...
FBM
 
  1  
Reply Tue 8 Dec, 2015 06:26 pm
@Fil Albuquerque,
I still don't have a good grip on your god, Fil. It seems more pantheistic than the Abrahamic god, but pantheism doesn't seem to be an accurate description of it, either.
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Tue 8 Dec, 2015 07:22 pm
@FBM,
Let me word salad a bit...its Meta pantheistic. More like a Mathematical object which is things themselves, all of them, all the time, all the space, all the stuff. The whole chronology and order of existence in the exact form it can only have. Its a big UNIFIED "rock" !

Being ALL its not any other thing, its anti specific but himself whole, although the "giver", the base, of whatever else, including the illusion of life.
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Tue 8 Dec, 2015 07:36 pm
@Fil Albuquerque,
Its perfection, its stillness, its "tranquillity", where pseudo problems and processes dissolve, is blindingly beautiful !
0 Replies
 
Leadfoot
 
  1  
Reply Tue 8 Dec, 2015 07:39 pm
@Fil Albuquerque,
Quote:
One is ONE period. (if ya get spacetime focus the IS in the last sentence in a timeless fashion)
Sort of sounds like 'The Power of Now' and a dozen other variations on conscious awareness I've read. There's a point there but it still left me hungry. I'm such an insatiable greedy bastard that way.
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Tue 8 Dec, 2015 07:45 pm
@Leadfoot,
Oh no...my "God" does not need be aware of anything, he is not conscious, not an agent, worse or better, he is the one who does not need question wonder or know...he is things...he is ORDER, MATHS, RATIO, REASON made rock.
Minds are imperfect wonderer's and questioners...God does not wonder or question or requires thinking toward future time. Time is beneath him...He/it, is dead...and yet the provider of the illusion of life and all complex VALUE we have for experience.
0 Replies
 
FBM
 
  1  
Reply Tue 8 Dec, 2015 08:57 pm
@Fil Albuquerque,
Fil Albuquerque wrote:

Let me word salad a bit...its Meta pantheistic. More like a Mathematical object which is things themselves, all of them, all the time, all the space, all the stuff. The whole chronology and order of existence in the exact form it can only have. Its a big UNIFIED "rock" !

Being ALL its not any other thing, its anti specific but himself whole, although the "giver", the base, of whatever else, including the illusion of life.


I've got to give final exams in a few minutes. I'll have a couple of hours to stroke my philosopher's beard and think about it. http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/bb192/DinahFyre/strokebeard_1.gif
0 Replies
 
FBM
 
  1  
Reply Wed 9 Dec, 2015 03:55 am
The original is quite long, and you can follow the link to it if you like, but here's the gist of it: http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/entry/many_god_beliefs_are_empirically_confirmable_and_refutable/

Quote:
Many God beliefs are empirically confirmable and refutable
December 7, 2015

...
However, to acknowledge there are questions science can't answer - including big questions about value, many philosophical, conceptual questions, etc. - is not to acknowledge that beliefs about the supernatural aren't scientifically refutable or confirmable. Many are. In fact, many god beliefs are empirically refutable, and have even been empirically refuted. How?

Claims about the unobservable are empirically confirmed, disconfirmed, and refuted all the time. Take claims about subatomic particles for example....Over time, considerable evidence for the existence of electrons has been gathered, to the point where their existence is now a fairly well-confirmed empirical hypothesis.

The distant past of this planet is another tract of the unobservable that is nevertheless open to empirical investigation....We can also establish beyond any reasonable doubt that the Earth is older than 10,000 years, despite the impossibility of our ever observing its past. The evidence is all around us.

So the unobservable - including the distant past and the subatomic - is not off limits to science. The same goes for the supernatural. Supernatural claims may concern unobservables but many are testable, and indeed many have been tested.

Take the claim that God, or some other being, supernaturally answers our petitionary prayers. Many people believe God does miraculous intervene in response to prayer, to heal the sick, say. However, they believe on the basis of anecdotal evidence, which is notoriously unreliable. There have been two huge, multi-million dollar double-blind investigations into whether prayer has any medical benefit for heart patients and both studies found no effect. This was not merely an absence of evidence; it was evidence of absence: observational evidence against the existence of a God that answers such prayers.

...However, as we add more to our god hypothesis, empirical methods can become appropriate. We can empirically rule out, beyond reasonable doubt, a God that answers certain sorts of prayer or a God that created the world less than 10,000 years ago.

Surely we can also rule out a God that is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-evil, and on much the same basis? Surely the world contains far too much love laughter, ice-cream, rainbows and other goods for this to be creation of such a malevolent and powerful being. ...
But if we can reasonably rule out an evil God on the basis of observation, why can't we rule out a good God on the same basis? Surely we can. Surely the world contains far too much suffering for it to be creation of such a benevolent and powerful being.

I want to show some humility here. I don't know why the universe exists....But still, I can quite reasonably rule out two gods: an evil God - which you do sensibly rule out too - and a good God - which you should sensibly rule out too.

In response, some theologians say, 'Oh how unsophisticated of you. That's not what sophisticated believers like my self believe.' They go 'Wittgensteinian' on us, insisting 'God exists' is not used to make a claim at all, let alone one an atheist might contradict or refute. ...

In my view, these sorts of move are usually little more than pompous self-deception accompanied by flights of rhetoric and obscurantism. But let's all at least agree that we can say what God is not: he is not all-powerful and all-evil. And he is not all-powerful and all-good.
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Wed 9 Dec, 2015 05:28 am
@FBM,
But he is all powerful if all HISTORY is in it. Being all things certainly he must be all the power there is to apply. Power points to action, change, and in God, all action is past, already done ! Please note that this view of God transcends normal time perception. This view puts time as a non fundamental feature of ultimate REALITY !

Equally also please carefully note that by all powerful I don't need to imply an acting agent. All action is past as time is not fundamental. God does not wish, command or invents. God as the whole of reality is like an accomplished logical film sequence. An order through history where logical unity is ALREADY established. Logos made thing.
FBM
 
  1  
Reply Wed 9 Dec, 2015 05:43 am
@Fil Albuquerque,
OK, so pantheism on steroids?
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Wed 9 Dec, 2015 05:55 am
@FBM,
Yes...but funny enough usually pantheism is connoted with the Universe as a whole being conscious like a living "creature"...my "pantheism" is exactly the opposite I rather say everything is just another special kind of rock even "life"...
Rocks process the heat of the sun in their surfaces, we process thoughts through our sensors...its all the same in the end of the day. We think life is special and awareness a sort of magical thing...but no...its all computing...And in ultimate reality the computing is already done. Time is frozen with all the unfolding order of things already "materialized"...
FBM
 
  1  
Reply Wed 9 Dec, 2015 06:01 am
@Fil Albuquerque,
I think that helped me understand you a bit better. Something like energy transfer with space-time collapsed into a single dimension? Not sentient itself, but inclusive of arisen islands of sentience?
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Wed 9 Dec, 2015 06:10 am
@FBM,
Yes. A One dimension huge string of binary code. Us and rocks and time n space...All the same unity in ONE !

Logic is the code no one has coded ! (not even "God" himself, it just IS !)
0 Replies
 
Leadfoot
 
  1  
Reply Wed 9 Dec, 2015 06:27 am
@Fil Albuquerque,
Quote:
From FBM's quoted source:
why can't we rule out a good God on the same basis? Surely we can. Surely the world contains far too much suffering for it to be creation of such a benevolent and powerful being.
Ding! Ding!

I was reminded of Dan Dennett's 'surely alarm' in his talk on tools for thinking that you linked to. The use of that word often points to the weak point in an argument.

No, we can't rule out a benevolent God on the basis of suffering. At one point I posited that suffering was one of the few things that prompt people to even consider the existence of God. Not that God inflicts suffering, but he's cognizant of the effect it can have. Even the atheist Nietzche agreed on the benefits of suffering.

Yes, it can go either way. You might find yourself either accepting or rejecting God because of suffering. Maybe he wants you to make that choice.
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Wed 9 Dec, 2015 06:38 am
@Leadfoot,
It was not me you are quoting...get that right !
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Wed 9 Dec, 2015 06:39 am
@Leadfoot,
Maybe there is no "he," and this is nothing more than theist sophistry. There is nothing which more quickly and surely undermines theist fairy tales than the issue of suffering and "evil" in the world. That Nietzsche was an idiot about suffering tells us nothing. Pointing out that Nietzsche was allegedly an atheist is just more of that idiotic position that theists always take which inferentially suggests that atheists are the practitioners of a religion, and bound by the pronouncements of other atheists.

But the issue of suffering and evil in the world always shoots down the god arguments of the christians, and that includes you no matter how much you protest that you're not one of them. You're entire theistic stance reeks of the Abrahamic idiocy upon which christianity is based.

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence comes evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

Epicurus got it right. The hypocrisy of christians is always exposed by the issues of suffering and so-called evil.
FBM
 
  1  
Reply Wed 9 Dec, 2015 06:45 am
@Leadfoot,
Now with the hair-splitting, non sequitur linguistics aside, maybe we can return to your evidence that your god even exists in the first place. Word wrangling aside, it always comes back to that one simple thing that you cannot provide: evidence. SURELY you have some evidence to support your claim? SURELY you're willing to share it with us out of your innate, perhaps divine, benevolence? SURELY you won't just offer up another insubstantial cluster of evidence-free rhetoric? SURELY... Wink
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Wed 9 Dec, 2015 06:53 am
@Setanta,
I agree with everything but your last question...Why call him God ? Well for one because Universality of Logic deserves that place. It deserves the God coinage. Concepts don't come to existence without utility. A God concept can be useful although most of them are wrong.
Obviously not referring to the Abrahamic child's play for frame of reference.
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Wed 9 Dec, 2015 06:56 am
@FBM,
Yes Dennet also said, he was careful enough, that surely can be sometimes used without necessarily implying a logical fallacy. Surely people should know it...
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Wed 9 Dec, 2015 07:01 am
@Fil Albuquerque,
Nonsense, concepts come into existence all the time without utility. The UFO bullshit, or its variant, the "ancient astronaut" bullshit only have utility for the hucksters who sell books to the credulous, and they could not do that unless the credulous already existed and were ripe for exploitation.

Really, ipse dixit claims, by which i mean such claims made with no attempt at substantiation, are worthless.
 

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