A few basic problems.

[Omega Weapon]

OK. As I'm sure many people will know and realise, or know and have a good response to; there are some rather odd problems in the idea of "God". First lets clear up the definition of God. Here I am referring to the most commonly accepted idea of God, we will associate with the Christian God. This is also Yaweh, Allah, and others, you get the idea. This means that this whole post is not directed at the multiple people here who believe in a different notion of God. Be that a universal consciousness or a binding energy; this really doesn't apply to you. However feel free to respond, but know this is aimed at this basic idea of God: omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, transcendence, perfection, and free willed. An omnipotent god is able to do anything. At this point I can present the--almost overused-popular spherical cube idea. God is all-powerful; yet, can He create a spherical cube? No, it isn't possible; a thing cannot have the qualities of both a sphere and a cube. Some Christians will answer yes, revealing that he is willing to forfeit logic and reason in order to maintain the omnipotence of God. In such a case, discussion is pointless and should cease. On the other hand, the spherical-cube concept is also impossible and illogical. One could argue that God is omnipotent, but His power is restricted to what is logically possible. If this is said, are we still discussing omnipotence, I wonder? If we aren't discussing limitless power, even if that ability is only halted by what is logically impossible, we aren't talking about omnipotence-we're talking about something with amazing abilities, but not omnipotent. After all, if we are to believe that God created the universe-the Christian will tell us that the universe isn't possible without God. Therefore, it would be logically impossible that the universe could have existed without the omnipotence of God. If God can use His omnipotence to create an impossible universe, why is this not true with an impossible spherical cube as well? If it is possible for the universe to come into existence naturally, a god would not be necessary for existence-shattering the notion that existence is evidence of God. With that in mind, I see the spherical-cube problem as a valid point to make. God is omniscient. There are a few things that come to mind when dealing with God's omniscience. For example, can God truly know what it is like to personally experience a mistake? If so, we have a conflict with God's perfection. If not, God doesn't know everything. Nor can we think that God can surprise himself, as He would know everything, including the surprise. The problems with omnipotence and omniscience become more evident when we add free will into the mix. Most of us believe God is free willed. Is it possible for God to both have free will and be omniscient? For example, if God is truly omniscient He knows what will happen seven days from now. He knows what I will be doing, what you will be doing, and what He will be doing. Can God escape doing what He sees Himself doing? If He can, then He isn't omniscient. However, if God cannot escape what He sees Himself doing in seven days, not only does His omnipotence come into question, but can it truly be said that God is free willed? This isn't a problem that God will only encounter seven days from now. God knows every single moment in the past and future, including the present. God knows what He will be doing in thirty seconds. If at any point God cannot escape what He sees in the future, He loses his omnipotence and free will. If He can, He loses His omniscience. Even with the issue of answering prayers, we must question whether or not God is actually acting on His own volition, or doing what His knowledge of the future predestines Him to do. God is omniscient; therefore He knows every single prayer that He will answer before it is even uttered. When Jane Doe falls into the lake and quickly prays for God to save her, God knew she would fall and pray eons ago. He always knew she would fall and pray. He has always known whether or not He will answer it. So, is God really answering a prayer or merely doing what is required: what He is programmed to do by His own knowledge of the future? So, we find that God cannot have free will and be both omnipotent and omniscient at the same time. If God is free, then God cannot be omniscient because He can't know the future. If God is not free, then He isn't omnipotent because his actions are predetermined. God cannot be both omnipotent and omniscient because He either is or is not free willed. God is also omnibenevolent. One must wonder why an omnibenevolent god would create a world that has or would come to have so much pain and suffering in it. It could be said that the current state of the world is a result of man misusing his free will, rather than God's fault. However, God knows all things and is capable of doing all things. God knew we would fail; knew that He would have to drown all but a few of the entire species at some point; knew that He would send a majority of us to Hell in the end. Still, He chose to create things in a manner that would allow such things to happen. Was it truly necessary for God to place a tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden? Not if God is omnipotent. So, by placing the tree in the Garden from the start, it seems as if God were the original tempter. However, I'd rather address man and his failure. God either created humans perfectly or imperfectly. Of course, if God created humans imperfect and then demanded perfect obedience, the fault is on God and God alone. So, it is necessary that God have created humans perfectly. Man couldn't have been created perfectly bad, because he would be compelled to perform nothing but bad actions. We would like to say that God created man perfectly good, but a perfectly good being would never have sinned. So, as I was once told, God created us perfectly neutral. Why an omnipotent God couldn't create a perfectly good species that also had the quality of free will is beyond me, but we'll accept the notion of perfect neutrality. The free willed and perfectly neutral nature of man isn't sufficient to save God from being the reason suffering is in the world. Creating a perfectly neutral humanity would be just as damning as creating a perfectly bad humanity. If humanity started out perfectly neutral, we were no more inclined to do good than we were to do bad, as we would have been no more inclined to do bad than to do good. So, what was there to compel us to do good or bad at all? If we were perfectly neutral, we wouldn't want to please God any more than we would want to please ourselves. Without some amount more of goodness, nothing at all would inveigle us to lean toward good behavior. We certainly would've had much trouble making any decisions; if we were perfectly neutral I imagine we were quite indecisive. God created a species that was no more likely to do good than it was to do bad. He planted nothing in us to cause us to inherently want to do good over bad, we know this since we were created perfectly neutral. So, God put a perfectly neutral pair of humans in a garden, a pair of people who had no preference over doing good or bad, good and bad are equally appealing, and then put a forbidden tree in the garden to tempt them. God then instructed them not to eat from the tree. This in itself was pointless, since the pair of people were perfectly neutral, they are no more inclined to do the good thing and obey God than they are to do the bad thing and disobey. Then God created a serpent, sent the serpent, or allowed the serpent to go to the Garden of Eden and tempt these perfectly neutral people. God is responsible for placing the Tree of Knowledge in the garden and for allowing the serpent the opportunity to tempt the gullible humans who knew of no good or evil, knew of no lies and liars. Certainly, if God was able to do the impossible task of creating the universe, He should've been able to give a couple of people a perfectly good nature while also keeping their free will intact. The fact still remains, evil and suffering wouldn't exist in a universe created by a perfect God which is omnibenevolent. God created all things, including evil. Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create the darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things. God created the first doer of evil, knowing in advance it would perform evil. That evil and suffering contradicts an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent god cannot be denied. Unless, of course, one makes an appeal to God's unknowable nature. In which case it is illogical to claim any knowledge of God or give any characteristics to God, including loving, powerful, knowing, creating, or even existing. Unless we are willing to abandon our reason, a form of intellectual suicide, we see that God, because of the very qualities we give Him, vanishes in a cloud of logic. But where do we get morals from if not God? If the atheist is correct then, as Kant says "everything is permitted". Well. Lets use common sense. First, I do not view Humanism as a religion but rather as an alternative to religion. This is a continuing debate, but my reasoning is simple. Words mean what most people take them to mean, and the word religion is associated in most people's minds with belief in supernatural, transcendent powers beyond matter. Most humanists would agree that no real evidence exists for these powers. While some would say, "anything is possible," I maintain that if thousands of years of human belief in the supernatural has still not resulted in any real evidence for a world beyond matter, than we can be pretty close to certain that it does not exist. When the probability for something is as low as is the probability for the existence of a spirit world, then we might as well forget about it. This brings me to the statement that Humanism is a rational alternative to religion. Not only is it irrational to believe in a spirit world without the slightest evidence for its existence, the spirit world imagined by most of the world's great religions conflicts with basic logic. Take the Christian God. He can't exist! The Christian God is supposed to be all powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. At the same time, humans have the free will to decide how to behave and affect their own futures. Further, bad things happen to good people (and bad). The Christian God is a logical contradiction, and logical contradictions don't exist. Obviously an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God cannot be logically consistent with the world we see with our own two eyes. If a God exists, he or she or it can't be the Christian God. It does not suffice to say, as Christians do, that mere humans cannot comprehend the mystery of this logical contradiction. That simply admits that God, as they define him, makes no sense. He's a square circle. If Christians want to believe in God, then they should think of a logical one. Humanism accepts the best evidence that the world is matter and nothing else. That is the only rational position that anyone can take - until the evidence warrants otherwise. Humanism also accepts the evidence from history that the moral codes adopted over the centuries were not handed down from above, but resulted from human beings themselves freely choosing the way they want to live. We have chosen to live in communities, and communities require their individual members to make certain sacrifices for the benefit of the whole. And that's all moral rules are. They are unwritten rules of behavior that we freely decide to follow. Most of us do so because we want to belong to the community, to reap the benefits. Sociopaths convince themselves that they can reap the benefits without applying the rules to themselves. Historically, governments have found religion to be a powerful tool for encouraging behavior that benefitted the community or, more frequently, the governors themselves. Threats of eternal damnation helped keep people in line. Humanism believes in moral behavior, but expects people to freely chose that behavior without the threat of damnation or governmental duress. As with its expectation for people to think rationally, Humanism relies on each of us to make individual sacrifices for the good of all humanity - without the promise of some personal prize of eternal life. Because it makes no promises except freedom of thought, Humanism will probably never be as successful as religion. But it remains a place for those wishing a rational and moral alternative. Anyhow. If you only skimmed through this, as I'm quite sure the majority of you will have done, then know that the points listed here are the base foundations of the problems. The problems go a bit deeper when we take the jump into psychology, and deeper parts of the Bible, and even the concept of "what is logic". But some of the main stuff is here. Not everything, but, it'll do for a good debate I guess? Please remember I'm not trying to do what many people seem to in this forum and stating "HA! HA! I proved you all wrong! come back to this one, if you're so good!" Because I really hate that attitude. The fact is this isn't meant to convince anyone, I'm just hoping for a good talking point. I'm an atheist myself, but I'm not here to destroy or attack I'm here to discuss what I find fascinating, and religion I find fascinating; mainly in a good way Edit; a whole load of these problems dissolve if you don't take the Bible literally; but a whole load of newer ones appear. [pick and choose etc] Anyway, this is sure to come up.

[Sornaensis]

... "The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.' "'But,' says Man, 'the Babel fish is a dead give away, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.' "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promplty vanishes in a puff of logic. ...

[Carôusoul]

tl;dr but i agree, don't worry.

[Taosaur]

My question: why is this notion of God so important to you if you are fairly convinced it addresses a nonentity? Is it simply a hobby, like sudoku to untangle so long as they assume a new shape to allow more untangling, or do you have some interest in what's really going on here? Do you feel this god-or-not question addresses the real state of things in any way?

[Dreamworld]

Onward to Deism.

[juroara]

bear with me here, I will give you my belief on this matter for the first part I would like to say that Christianity is contradictory in how they approach God and what they claim God to be " omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, transcendence, perfection, and free willed." okay, so your first scenario - can God make a spherical-cube? there are two problems with this scenario 1. the human language. we define something as a sphere or cube. its not any different than asking if God can make blue-red. can you have blue-red? yes, but the color is neither blue or red. we give it a whole new name - purple 2. we are assuming, because God is transcendent, God transcends the universe. the universe came with its own baggage, its own set of rules. 'rules' that God has no intention of breaking just to make a silly point. if the 'rules' of the universe say, there can't be a spherical-cube, then there is no spherical-cube 3. that doesn't mean there can't be an entire other reality with its own rules that would defy our comprehension allowing for a spherical-cube. it just means in this specific created reality - thats a no-no "For example, can God truly know what it is like to personally experience a mistake? If so, we have a conflict with God's perfection."" have you ever experienced a mistake? then God experienced it. you are God in human form. let me go on! wait! not done yet! "God knows what He will be doing in thirty seconds. If at any point God cannot escape what He sees in the future, He loses his omnipotence and free will. If He can, He loses His omniscience." Time is a construct of this universe. God is transcendent of this universe, God is outside of time. There is no past or future, only right NOW. Future becomes a thing of importance only when humans and other time based beings are concerned. But God is only concerned with the NOW, as only the NOW is existing, and God IS. "God is omniscient; therefore He knows every single prayer that He will answer before it is even uttered. " Humans have this idea *well Christians* that God knows everything that is going to happen in the future. Yes, well God knows every possible future. But not which future your free will chooses. again, read on - not done explaining! "So, as I was once told, God created us perfectly neutral. " Well, I don't know who told you this, but that would be a lie in this scenario. The human soul is created in a naturally good state, with an innate desire to love and to self transcend. Okay.....are you READY? You ready?? You are about to hear a very ancient understanding of God, one taught in christianity before churches were built. It remained a cultic belief until new age revived it. God is all that jazz and mumble jumble you said earlier. But there is another attribute of God not being talked about. God is omnipresent. Let me give you the basic creation story of this omnipresent God. In some magical lalala land, that not even buddha himself could wholefully comprehend - there is this being we call God. Yet this being is actually multiple beings, multiple individuals. But each individual, recognizes they are all God, and thus sees themself as part of the whole. But also, to call these beings 'beings', is also a very uh, humanized can't-understand-version-of-it. Well one day, if you can call it a day, one of the aspects thought - what would it be like to discover myself? And the dance of self-worship begins. God desires to create mini-versions, who temporarily don't know they are God, and when discovering they are God, they rejoice in absolute bliss and happiness, and so on and so on. Now, this aspect of God could not leave this realm of godliness - well rather, there was nothing outside this reality. So the first thing God created, was an equal half who would serve as the other reality of which the mini-gods were created in. This other half would be known as the Divine Feminine, and the God that created her, the Divine Masculine. So the masculine created the feminine. The masculine becomes this desire, this force to create a multitude of life forms who do not know they are God *because anything that IS, is God.*. The feminine becomes a platform, a reality of which they live, and it is she that decides what the forms become, what shape they take. Combined, they make an expanding and contracting force. Through creation, God is self-transcending, because God is creating, more of godself. And this is the first law of the universe, and the desire of all life forms. SELF TRANSCENDENCE. It is perpetual and never ceasing. The first creations instantly recognized they were God. And thus in turned, they carried out the same desire to self-transcend - to become more. By creating more mini-gods who were apart of themselves. And then those mini-gods created mini-gods who were apart of themselves. And it goes on and on and on. With each 'generation' realizing they are God, their platform of reality 'ascends'. Its these ascended realities that we call heaven. With each generation of mini-gods - they remember less and less and less of their god-hood. With each one, they are more individualized. With each one, it takes longer and longer and longer to remember. So once upon a time, we get this group of 'gods'. They know, that truly, they are God. And these gods, knowing that they are God discovering they are God, decide to create earth Now after the creators *plural* made the earth, they desired there to be a dominant life stream like themselves, that is, they too would be creators. Thus humanity is known as co-creators. We create in more or less in the same manner, through thoughts. *thought manifestation* Humanity had free will before the 'fall'. And everything was peachy and fine. The creators called themselves 'God', which was fine. Because they were the representative of God for this planet. However, they did not know everything that was come to pass. They did NOT know that humanity would 'fall'. But there is no fear in God. Even if humanity falls God knows humanity is an expression of God, and would eventually see through their illusion. The fall would be a mere moment in the entirety of their immortality. The falling of mankind represents a mindset where we think we are separate from God, which was why in the story adam and eve thought they could hide from God. This fall was related to the fall of angels, who also thought that God was separate. *you can know you are not separate from God, but still not remember your god-hood* ******************** Illusions and Reality Reality in this scenario is everything that is God, and God is perfect again in this scenario. An illusion is a reality that is not of God, being held up only temporary by beings who do not realize they too are apart of God, illusions then are imperfect things. God allows them to hold up these illusions because God respects their free will, and it can be a good learning lesson. So, no the omnipresent God is not crap, or vomit. These things are illusions as far as we are concerned here. Humans hold up many illusions. One illusion is "if I make a mistake, therefore I am not perfect" but since the first law of this universe is to self-transcend, to become more than what you were yesterday, perfection is a state of perpetual self-transcendence. Perfection is not a state of being the same and never changing, that is a closed system, which will decay on itself. (which is why they decay, because they broke the first law of the universe) In Gods eyes, making a 'mistake' does not make you imperfect. In Gods eyes, you are perfect. It is the human ego telling you otherwise. If making a mistake allows you to learn, an act of self-transcendence, then there was nothing wrong. That does not mean that the suffering on earth is necessary for the path of self-transcendence. Its hardly necessary. But things went, not according to the plans of the Creators. When we 'fell', we forgot our true lineage, and that cut us off from being able to connect to the Creators. When we fell we thought of bad things, bad things manifested. Earth is in the shitty shape it is today, because of us. Very few humans have realized their god-hood. Buddha, and Jesus among them. In this case, Jesus shows us what is possible for a human when a human reconnects to the reality that they are God *ANYTHING*. It is not possible, unless you let the human ego die. *which we hold onto for dear lives* With Earth as a whole not claiming its god-hood, we prevent this entire type of reality - the material from becoming an ascended reality. So, if we are a black smear on a pretty painting, why not destroy us if we are holding everyone else back? We are little individual sparks of God. God IS. God can not be destroyed. You can kill us a thousand times over, the human soul will still exist. Our free will is divine. It is so divine, no other God in existence can control our free will. Thus, we will only cease to be, when we choose to cease to be. our free will is divine, in this scenario, God actually doesn't know everything humanity will do. Because if we have not decided through our free will, then the future remains open to many possibilities. God can however, know all of those possibilities. Just not, necessarily, when it comes down to it, which we will choose through our divine free will. This answers the problem of why God would create a being if God knows this being is going to do great evil. Because God doesn't know for certain if they will do great evil. God will also see their future potential. And what we as humans don't see, is how the potential good out weighs the potential bad a thousand fold. It is only the God in us that knows what we will ultimately choose. In other words, YOU. there is much much more to the picture. understanding that the human being is also God is vital to the big picture. Jesus let his human ego die on the cross. This was why he was able to be 'seated at the right hand of God', and why spirituality is a path you walk alone. No other God in the sky, in heaven or else where can walk that path for you. ****************** The Holy Spirit and the Unforgivable Sin The Holy Spirit is a force of self-transcendence. It exposes what is wrong in your being, what is wrong in society, and compels those who have it to make the right changes. Blasphemizing the holy spirit is not a verbal thing the unforgivable sin in this case, is a denial to self-transcend - its a rebellion against God, a rebellion against the very reason why this universe was created. A rejection of the holy spirit to flow through your being. When you refuse to self-transcend over a period of time, God does not look the other way. The punishment is, destroying the illusion that kept you from self-transcending. Thats why, sometimes it feels, destruction has to happen before things can get better. Destruction isn't necessary for positive change. But when something refuses to change and grow, be it a religion, a society, a culture - it will be destroyed. ************* anyways, I know this won't sound like christianity. but taking a closer look at Jesus teachings and understanding that God is in you is vital to understanding the rest of God.

[Sandform]

I am god, for I know that tomarro something will happen... Wouldn't that be ironic? Hehe if God was omniscient in the idea that he knows "something" will happen but not what? Then he would just be human. Hey! I'm god. I love my circular logic