Does God exist?

[MidGe]

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I think you might call God both incompetent and evil, but much in the same way that children call their parents selfish for witholding sweets.

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Not the right argument, bunny. Parents do not have omnipotence or omniscience. In fact their lives are at the merci of the very incomptence or evil, unfortunately.

[bunny]

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I think you might call God both incompetent and evil, but much in the same way that children call their parents selfish for witholding sweets.

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Not the right argument, bunny. Parents do not have omnipotence or omniscience. In fact their lives are at the merci of the very incomptence or evil, unfortunately.

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First to clarify that it was Pilliwinks, not me who made this argument so this response may not match what he was trying to get across...

As I understood his post, I think the point was not that parents are omnipotent and omniscient merely morepotent and morescient than their children. I dont think the omni is required for the argument to have some weight.

[MidGe]

Hiya bunny,

Sorry about the confusion between pilliwinks and yourself.


I think it is precisely the "omni" that makes the argument for god being evil. Anything less and you admit that the behaviour may not be perfect, merely incompetent.

[Lestat]

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"How many times have bad things happened to good people or good things happen to bad people?"

What does that have to do with anything?

Also for all you know there could be millions of people in heaven with god right now making it a fact but we just have no instruments availible to makes this measurement or observation that there is or isnt a heaven (or another dimesion that followers of God are allowed to enter after they die on earth). We cant make any measurements or observations about string theory but it still has quite a following.

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Sorry, but what a ridiculous way to think! We don't have instruments to measure or be able to see, a big bowl of marinara sauce floating in the comsmos that a flying spaghetti monster has created for all the good people to relish after they die either.

What's your point?

[Lestat]

<font color="blue">You don't have to believe in anything that has been proven wrong.. </font>

How old do you think the earth is?

<font color="blue"> If something has proved itself over and over again, aren't you more likely to trust in that outcome that keeps on occuring? </font>

How old do you think the earth is?

[pilliwinks]

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Hiya bunny,

Sorry about the confusion between pilliwinks and yourself.


I think it is precisely the "omni" that makes the argument for god being evil. Anything less and you admit that the behaviour may not be perfect, merely incompetent.

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The point I'm trying to make is that parents in witholding sweets are not being evil or incompetent. They are being wise and loving.

The fact that you interpret wise and loving treatment as either evil or incompetent just reflects the limitations of your viewpoint, not the constraints on their behaviour.

Of course you will argue again that there are so many horrible things that God allows that he cannot be just witholding treats, but you/we have no perspective from which to judge that. We know that mollycoddling children ruins them, and that discipline benefits them - can you be sure we are not undergoing the necessary boot camp training for eternity?

[MidGe]

hiya pilliwinks,

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We know that mollycoddling children ruins them, and that discipline benefits them - can you be sure we are not undergoing the necessary boot camp training for eternity?

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That seems very fascist (evil) to me, and more, this is all within a context we/aprents have no choice about, and would not choose. If god created me with the ability to discriminate between good and evil, I don't see why I should not apply the standard to him. Given "omni" potence, he could have set it up without needless suffering. To see it differently is to see good and evil as not applicable to god. That to me is truly anathema. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] It is simply the most basic self-contradiction in a theism that sees god as good.

[madnak]

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can you be sure we are not undergoing the necessary boot camp training for eternity?

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Yup. See: Hell.

Or do you wanna explain how eternal torture is good for the soul?

A temporary hell? Maybe. Suffering on earth? Maybe. But an eternity of torment that never ends or goes anywhere, by definition can't be for the good of the "child." This isn't a parent withholding treats, it's a parent saying to a child, "You can never eat anything ever again. Tough luck if you starve. But I love you!"

[revots33]

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The point I'm trying to make is that parents in witholding sweets are not being evil or incompetent. They are being wise and loving.

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So when an infant drowns to death in a tsunami, is that God witholding sweets?

Again, to me the problem of evil is the one I always come back to. I've read some apologetics books recently, but have yet to hear a good argument for why horrific things happen to innocent people on a daily basis.

[RyanCMU]

No.

One of the problems I have always had with the existent of God and religious figures is how certain religions and cultures have mulitple gods, and if every religion has a god or gods, which god is the real god? is there even a real god? So which religions are corect and which are BS?