So you have nothing other than the unknowable God defense. Got it. As i said, it's impossible to have rational discussions with people like you on religion. You always fall back on the same old circular arguments.

You asked me to rationalize the decisions of a god. That wouldn't make sense in any religion. It has nothing to do with being circular. It's just a dumb question.

'tstrimple' said:

So you have nothing other than the unknowable God defense. Got it. As i said, it's impossible to have rational discussions with people like you on religion. You always fall back on the same old circular arguments.

You asked me to rationalize the decisions of a god. That wouldn't make sense in any religion. It has nothing to do with being circular. It's just a dumb question.

This started because someone said the old testament god was a bully, sadist, etc, etc, etc... You countered saying that it was only when taken out of context. I provided context, and your only defense against the old testament god being all of those things described is we cannot understand god's actions. If you believe the bible to be infallible, it describes exactly why God did what he did to the Egyptians and that was to prove how powerful he is which is consistent with the description of god being a petty bully.

'Jarwulf' said:

'Tachikoma' said:

If you make an assertion about the existence of anything, onus is on you to provide observable and repeatable evidence for it. This is a fundamental principle that can not be overlooked. You may faith in something, but do not ever confuse 'belief' with 'fact'. You may have experienced something that leads you to believe in something, but do not confuse 'experience' with 'evidence' either, as personal experiences can not be observed objectively. Many people make the mistake of mixing up these concepts. Worse still, some people deliberately blur these distinctions to convince others.

The way I understand it. Occam's Razor doesn't apply to Entities with no beginning (which God is sometimes presumed to be) because there is no associated set of events leading up to God's existence which would make it a more unlikely event than God's nonexistence. IE its not the same thing as an assertion stating that your cup broke because you dropped it on the floor vs your cup broke because of a CIA conspiracy with the Loch Ness Monster.

Now it CAN be applied to God intervening in any way but being omnipotent and omniscient and all that God may have found some sublimely simple ways to do anything.

Occam's Razor has nothing to do with causality.
(Exactly how you count assumptions isn't defined, but it doesn't need to be for the principle to be solid).

Are you sure? it seems Occam's Razor has everything to do with causality. Each event has a probability. Because of this a situation with a more events causing it (more complicated) is less likely than one with a less events causing it (less complicated). Thats the reason why it (sometimes) works.

It is simply: You should prefer the explanation that makes the least assumptions.

Why? Because Occam's Razor came out of the sky and told you to?

wow, this is still rolling along...
gotta love the epic flame threads

wow, this is still rolling along...
gotta love the epic flame threads

Ha ha this is pretty tame compared to some.

'superpig' said:

'Jarwulf' said:

The way I understand it. Occam's Razor doesn't apply to Entities with no beginning (which God is sometimes presumed to be) because there is no associated set of events leading up to God's existence which would make it a more unlikely event than God's nonexistence. IE its not the same thing as an assertion stating that your cup broke because you dropped it on the floor vs your cup broke because of a CIA conspiracy with the Loch Ness Monster.

Now it CAN be applied to God intervening in any way but being omnipotent and omniscient and all that God may have found some sublimely simple ways to do anything.

Occam's Razor has nothing to do with causality.
(Exactly how you count assumptions isn't defined, but it doesn't need to be for the principle to be solid).

Are you sure? it seems Occam's Razor has everything to do with causality. Each event has a probability. Because of this a situation with a more events causing it (more complicated) is less likely than one with a less events causing it (less complicated). Thats the reason why it (sometimes) works.

What you're describing is a different principle. It may or may not be solid.

It is simply: You should prefer the explanation that makes the least assumptions.

Why? Because Occam's Razor came out of the sky and told you to?

Because it's more far-reaching (doesn't refer solely to events), makes fewer assumptions itself, and because everybody else who uses it in argument means it that way. See also Wikipedia, Google Definitions, HowStuffWorks...

Can I just chip in here with another really useful snippet?

I do indeed think that anyone who thinks the Earth is 6,000 years old is an idiot. Worse than an idiot in fact. Unless he is severely retarded, even an idiot can still learn stuff if you take the time to teach him. Whereas a zealot won't budge a millimetre on anything.

For all we know after they were "slaughtered" they were visited with the most pure and limitless love, joy, and fulfillment imaginable.

Darn, I had promised not to, but I can't resist... this is just too much :-)

The concept of "heaven" had not been invented at that time (neither the conception of hades in Luke that was probably "borrowed" from the Greek), so all these people could expect after death at that time was "sheol", a place where the dead were said to be "remote from the light of God" (whatever that means, but surely it doesn't mean "love and joy"), regardless of whether they had been good or bad.

As such, there is really only one possible interpretation on how God must have perceived killing those people, since obviously (God knows everything!) he knew that they'd go to a nasty, dark place. And, he knew they were innocent (like a three year old with a burning glass and an anthill).

This conception of afterlife is consistent with "an eye for an eye", too (which much unlike stated in some earlier post can not possibly be interpreted as "lend a blind man an eye". The texts are very clear about the meaning. No matter whether you look in Leviticus, Exodus, or Deuteronomy, the context is always "show no mercy, hack, slash, burn, cripple, kill, kill, kill!").
One might wonder why such harsh, barbaric punishment is openly advocated, but if one considers that dying does not mean "join your god in joy" but rather "go to some dark, desolate place", then it becomes explainable why an offender was expected to face no less but the same fate.

I fail to see why complexity of a concept, or the number of assumptions, should lead to a better or worse explanation of anything. Things just 'are' - our job is to reverse engineer what we see, and then model it in some form, irrespective whether the phenomenon is simple or complex. There is too much focus on what was 'possible' and 'impossible', as opposed to assessing the plausibility of a hypothesis based on the testable knowledge we accumulated so far. In other words, one could always say that God's existence is possible, although our observation of the universe makes God's existence unlikely. Arguing the contrary is quite difficult, especially in a testable form. There is no way around it. Unfortunately, some people facing this situation enter into denial mode and practically blot-out entire branches of testable scientific concepts from their minds. I don't understand how anyone can operate like this and lie to themselves.

'way2lazy2care' said:

'ChaosEngine' said:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
-Dawkins

Dawkins verbosity aside, it's a pretty accurate list of accusations.

I don't think Dawkins is the best person to go to for any sort of unbiased picture of God.

Exactly. In any case, judging the actions of God from a human perspective is futile. That's like an ant judging the actions of humans. We're simply not qualified to do so objectively.



Please tell me you're joking. Sorry, but by your own belief system you've been given free will above all other creatures to MAKE A CHOICE. To judge. It's moral cowardice to suggest that if god does something we cannot judge him.

The term "act of god" has come to mean an amoral event, usually a natural disaster. We can't judge this because there is no intent behind it. But if you believe there is a moral reason behind such acts you must judge the perpetrators intent.