On 1/11/2013 9:41 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 4:42 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 1/11/2013 2:17 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 11:25 AM, <spudboy...@aol.com
<mailto:spudboy...@aol.com>>
wrote:
In a message dated 1/11/2013 2:27:33 AM Eastern Standard Time,
jasonre...@gmail.com <mailto:jasonre...@gmail.com> writes:
1) Choose some religion, it doesn't matter which
2) Find an idea some adherents of that religion put forward but
almost no
one seriously believes in or is easily shown to be inconsistent
3) Assume that because you have disproved one idea of one religion
that all
ideas found in all religions are false and/or unscientific
4) Bask in the feeling of superiority over those who are not so
enlightened
Jason
Ok, so in Darwinian fashion you sort through hundreds of faiths, so what
happens when you cannot dissprove a religion? You sort them down till
you hit a
toughie, does that make it automatically correct, or is it the
intellectual
limitation of the sorter? Your Basking, is angering many non-believers,
even.
Witness Higg's criticism of Dawkins. Believers, Jason, I suppose will
merely,
pray for your soul (poor lad!).
Perhaps if you decided to create your own religion, that couldn't be
disproved,
based on physics, or math, you would be coming up with the best faith?
Then we
could all be converted to being Jasonites. Or Reschers-whichever you
prefer?
I'm nor sure I understand your point. My point was only that John's
adherence to
atheism, which he defines as belief in no Gods, is less rational than
someone
following his 4-step program to become a liberal theologian.
In particular, it is the above step 3, rejecting all religious ideas as
false
without giving the idea a fair scientific evaluation, which is especially
problematic. John is perhaps being prescient in turning a blind eye to
these other
ideas, as otherwise we might have the specter of a self-proclaimed atheist
who
finds scientific justification for after lives, reincarnation, karma,
beings who
exercise complete control over worlds of their design and creation, as well
as
a self-existent changeless infinite object responsible for the existence of
all
reality.
He would rather avoid those topics altogether and take solace in denying
specific
instances of inconsistent or silly definitions of God.
But your parody fails as a serious argument because the ideas put forward
by *almost
all theists* include a very powerful, beneficent, all knowing superbeing
who will
judge and reward and punish souls in an after life and who answers prayers.
Please provide some reference showing almost all theists use that definition of God. I
find it unlikely that most theists would incorporate every facet of that definition.
"Every facet"?? It's only the standard, three omni's of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam
except I left the requirements even weaker, plus answering prayers. You're just being
obtuse. You know perfectly well that's what theism means.
Even between various sects of Christianity and Islam, views differ regarding whether or
not God is all knowing. An all-knowing God implies predestination, which is contested
between various groups.
Now some, far from powerful, humans with far from complete information,
eliminated
smallpox from the world. God therefore must have had that power and simply
chose
not to do it. So if any very powerful, very knowledgeable superbeing
exists, it is
not beneficent and not an acceptable judge of good and evil. These are not
just a
peripheral idea of theisms and it's falsehood is not a minor point because
all
theism insist that these ideas are definitive of their religion.
It doesn't matter if 95% of theisms are ones you find fault with; it only takes one
correct theism to make atheism wrong, which is why I think it is an untenable and
illogical position.
But there can't be even 'one correct theism' as I pointed out above, the very definition
of theism allows it to be empirically falsified by the appearance of unnecessary evil, in
my example evil that mere human beings had the power to eliminate and did eliminate. What
can you say about a superbeing who can eliminate an evil but chooses not to. You can't
say he's the beneficent God of theism.
Brent
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
