Thread: My Notebook of Religion

Originally Posted by thegnome54

That's just massively flawed reasoning. You're essentially saying that if God does not do everything, you don't think he fits the 'perfect' criterion. "Perfect" does not mean "doing everything", otherwise you could say that since goes is unable to not exist, he isn't perfect, as he can't do everything. "Perfect", as seismosaur has said multiple times, means without flaw, whole, etc. Wants and needs are a clear reflection of imperfection, using the word 'perfect' as Christianity does to describe God.

Yes I know, I'm using the statement as an example to show the cyclical, "catch 22" nature of S's reasoning; it can work both ways. Nothing I said there is actually evidence for or against God, directly, neither did I intend it to be.

Originally Posted by thegnome54

Similar error as before. God is supposed to be 'perfect', the human ideal of a flawless being. No humans are perfect, and so all humans 'need' before they could be comsidered perfect. Therefore, all humans should be expected to want. God, however, being 'perfect' should not want. This is why the opposite is true for humans and God - one needs and should want, the other needs not and should not want.

I still feel that is judging God by Human terms.

Originally Posted by thegnome54

The human terms are suggested by the bible, when it says that god loves. Seismosaur's point here is really that there is no nonphysical basis for love, therefore in order for a god to experience love as we know it, it would have to be a physical being. Personally, I expand this argument to say that there is no evidence that anything nonphysical exists, and so the assumption that god does and is is uncalled for. Seis's argument is sort of a sub-category of this overarching issue of god's alleged non physicality.

Your extension of S's reasoning offers an ironic twist:
The non-physical God does not exist, because, a non-physical God cannot exist. Do you see the problem here?

Originally Posted by thegnome54

I don't think you read Seis's question properly. Look:


Last time I checked, all four of those accounts were in the bible. For all we know, all four were made up at once. I don't know much about the Koran, but it is also a religious text, and therefore largely metaphorical and not particularly trustworthy. Shouldn't there be other documentation from these times?

I could be wrong on this last point, I really don't know much about the available resources from that time.

"Why is the bible the only record of this and any other miracle event"?

The bible is a non physical concept, it is a collation of historical articles; they are the physical articles that comprise "The Bible". The four gospels probably come from two independent sources; there are similarities between three of them that suggest they came from the same source, or, were copied from eachother. Historians didn't discover the bible as a whole if that is your misconception.

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

Why would there be? Also, I'm not sure about your bed analogy. Perhaps what you are thinking of is parallel universes, which are not dimensions at all despite having been given that name by hokey science fiction. A dimension is an axis of direction; up and down, left and right, forward and backward, and past and future(you'll have to excuse my relative descriptions). I'm not saying that it is impossible that more of these exist, but how would you propose a state of being that somehow managed to exist without utilizing one or many of these dimensions? I can't fathom a 2 dimensional creature, and there is no evidence of such a thing, and so I can't even imagine how there could be more spatial dimensions that we are somehow avoiding.

Like I said, your description sounds a lot more like parallel universes. Even though there is no evidence of them either, they would be a lot more plausible, and in fact would only require one more dimension for there to be an infinite number of them as you describe in your bed analogy. Like I said, string theory proposes up to 7 more dimensions that fold in such a way that they do not directly effect our spatial reality and could allow for this possibility.

No, not what I was talking about really.

Just to go off on a tangent:
I really hate the "can god make a rock he can't lift" objection. Of course he fucking can't. Why should an omnipotent being be able to create an entity more powerful than itself? That's a contradiction, but of course god is omnipotent, so he can simply make logic no apply to him, right?

And therein sprials all logic and almighty-ness.

Josephus' writings on Jesus are proven forgeries. You fail.

Originally Posted by Lord Bennington

Josephus' writings on Jesus are proven forgeries. You fail.

Originally Posted by RedfishBluefish

Just to go off on a tangent:
I really hate the "can god make a rock he can't lift" objection. Of course he fucking can't. Why should an omnipotent being be able to create an entity more powerful than itself? That's a contradiction, but of course god is omnipotent, so he can simply make logic no apply to him, right?

No, God IS logic. He'd be a walking contradiction if he made logic not apply to himself.

What's wrong with contradictions without logic?

Originally Posted by RedfishBluefish

What's wrong with contradictions without logic?

If logic is nonexistent to God, then God is nonexistent to God. Not to mention that a paradox is a paradox no matter what. God either can't create the rock, or can't lift it. There is no other possibility. I suppose he could get rid of the Law of the Excluded Middle, and the third possibility would be "I like fish", but that would be really dodgy.

So what? He's omnipotent. He can do anything.

I'm just pointing out that omnipotence is impossible. It's utterly paradoxical. God is part of every set, including the set of sets God is not a part of. That does not make sense. He isn't omnipotent. It can't happen.

Can he create a stone Chuck Norris can't lift?

Seriously, the "stone he cannot lift" thing is old. Instead, use the "can god make a person whose beliefs he cannot control?" version. It's similar, except scriptures state that people have free will.

Omnipotence & Free.will == FAIL()

+1 what replicon and Seis said.

I doubt any religions actually state that God is omnipotent to the point of paradox anyway.