Atheists: Winning since 33 A.D.
Submitted by Abortions Tickle on Sat, 2007-12-08 12:19.
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"I will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her whelps, and will rend the caul of their heart, and there will I devour them like a lion: the wild beast shall tear them."
- Hosea 13:8 (KJV)
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Please read http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/
Exceptionally good book. Totally topic related here.
Yeeee yeeee, mofos.
I am God.
You fools, I will send all your souls to hell
This reminds me of an arguement I put on a message board a few minutes ago:
If God knows everything, he knows what we will do before we do it, and we can do nothing to deviate from that, then we don't have free will, because we can't do anything but what he already knows we will do. So we don't have free will.
But then how does He decide whether or not we go to Heaven or Hell? If we can't choose what we do, surely whether or not we sin is moot, since we can't do anything but what he knows we're going to do?
Also, from here, we can assume that since we have a set path, and everything we do is already decided, that those decisions, that path we must take was created by, well, the creator, God. God is therefore responsible for every bit of human suffering ever commited, since he decided it would happen, thus making him evil, and making any humans in hell undeserving, mere marrionettes in God's depraved puppet show. This gets around the whole "well moral evil is down to free will" since that's an illusion, and He is pulling the strings all along. Either God is evil or not omniscient (or omnipotent - if He doesn't know something, He has no power over it, meaning that He isn't all-powerful either). Either way, he's either evil, poweless/knowledgeless or not real at all. He's not all-powerful but evil, since the "big rock" thing overrules omnipotence, so either He's a cripple by theistic standards, or He's a completely fictional character. Either way, He's not worth my worship.
this is an old one... and creationists and theists (the smart ones) can explain it away quite easily.
basically, the refutation to this "god knows what we will do so we don't have free will" argument is that god doesn't experience time the way we do. there is no past or future for god because he exists outside of time. so, he knows what we have done and what we WILL do because he sort of sees it all at once.
make sense?
Actually, no. Maybe I'm simply having a particularly dense day, but your point does absolutely nothing to "explain it away." It makes no difference whether god exists in our mortal space-time continuum; what matters is the idea that an omniscient god would necessarily have to know everything that we will wind up doing at any point in our lives. Even if he knows every possible alternative we could choose to do/perform/take (which he should, being all-knowing), he would still know the single option we would settle on at any given fork in the road. Thus, even if god does not exist in our perception of time (which makes sense to me), he already knows our exact future, because he "sort of sees it all at once."
How, then, can any Christian claim to have any real role in shaping his life if he subscribes to the idea of an all-knowing deity? The predestinationists had the right idea. Since god knows all, he already knows where we are going. Thus, everything we do is for nothing, because we are already destined for some as-yet-unknown fate.
If Christians can take social Darwinism to its "logical conclusion" and relate it to the Holocaust and Stalin's brand of genocide, then I can safely and rightly take Christianity, in its purest form, to its "logical conclusion" and point out that it is little more than nihilist nonsense.
Exactly how does this argument help atheism? It allows for the existence of a malevolent God (and perhaps may even support this conclusion, if you think about it).
God is still supposedly capable of preventing natural disasters, diseases, and accidents. Is God not malevolent if he allows the death of a newborn due to reasons out of human control? Answer: yes.
"To prevent evil, God would have to force every person to do what is exactly perfect, like slavery."
False dilemma fallacy. It's not simply God allows evil or we surrender free will.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
The third option available to an all powerful all knowing god is knowing how to and then having the ability to implement a system for personal growth that does not require evil (or duality in general) and yet still leave room for free will. The question then becomes if he knows how, and he can, then why doesn't he? Which is pretty much the whole point of the quote.
Thank you for playing. Next?
This is not a good argument for atheism.
The answer to the nature of God is that He is able to prevent evil, but in a sense not willing. However, this does not necessarily make Him malevolent. A further explanation ensues:
To prevent evil, God would have to force every person to do what is exactly perfect, like slavery. All people would just be mini-gods, who would have no enjoyment to live or die for. Would a loving God want humans to exist like this? No. And, if this did happen, God would be the one commiting evil.
Plus, God gave all humans a conscience, so they could know right and wrong, and feel guilt when performing wrong, thus making the world less evil.
This perception of God makes the argument of this image fall apart.
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