I learnt plenty thanks....
The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday
by cofty 2596 Replies latest jw experiences
-
-
Simon
This thread has already been taken off topic like so many before it by the endless preaching. The latest off topic comments have been removed and will continue to be removed. Please refer to the posting guidelines:
10. Posting an off-topic comment.
11. Publicly disputing or arguing about moderator decisions. If you disagree with any action taken then please raise it via email or PM.
Forums may be moderated to make sure they stay friendly and welcoming, legal and relevant. We reserve the right to edit or delete posts at own discretion and without notice, which we consider to be unacceptable. If you repeatedly break these guidelines, you may be prevented from posting.
Please try to get the message: if you just want to tell us about your god, or how little you value other people's lives, we're simply not interested so go elsewhere if you can't discuss the topics properly. If you think it's unfair then tough, find a forum that better suits your biases and don't try to turn this into what it isn't.
I would also remind people that some were blocked for attacking theists on this forum - we're not playing sides here, it's all about whether people are here to discuss things and be civil or just to preach an agenda whether that is religion, politics, some conspiracy theory they dreampt up under a tin-foil hat or whatever.
-
flamegrilled
Okay, I switched my brain back on and I will have to withdraw what I previously wrote (oh wait, someone already removed it so that's good). It's too painful not to be allowed to think.
Cofty asked which of these I disagree with:
1. God observed the Asian tsunami as it evolved
2. God knew it would kill a quarter of a million people and displace 5 million more
3. God had the power to stop the tsuanmi
4. God did not stop the tsuanmi
5. Everything that god does is perfectly loving
6. Therefore allowing a tsunami to drown a quarter of a million people is a perfect act of love.
It starts to go off the rails at point 5.
Whilst the statement may be true, the way you are framing it is an oversimplification. What you are really asking us to agree is:
God is love therefore every act or lack of action taken in isolation must definable as an act of love.
This is not necessarily true.
I will create a couple more analogies that you can have fun misapplying and pretending not to understand.
You are a generous father. Does every action taken in isolation reflect that? Your daughter asks you for a high powered sports car as soon as she passes her driving test. Let's say you have the power to buy it i.e. it's easily affordable to you. Should we expect every action you make (or do not make) to reflect your generous personality? If we take your decision in isolation (assuming that you are a sensible parent who withholds it because of care for her safety) does this non-action in isolation reflect your entire personality as non-generous?
Here's another. The objective of a soccer team is to get the ball to other end of the pitch and score. A player makes a pass backwards. If taken in isolation does that mean that the player is not acting in accord with the objective?
Now you will say ... explain how killing a gazillion people = passing a soccer ball, blah.
-
THE GLADIATOR
flamegrilled "I will create a couple more analogies that you can have fun misapplying and pretending not to understand."
I don't have to pretend.
-
KateWild
You do seem determined to misunderstand whatever I say, but you are not alone on that. - cofty
Apologies Bill, I wasn't misunderstanding what you were saying. I was expanding on your context. Belief in God is the least of my issues. I come here to debate about God to get away from my personal JW issues. I have activley participated in different threads to help with issues. The rigidity of this thread makes it harder to enjoy than other God vs atheist threads.
But at present I am dealing with particularly difficult JW issues. I may start a thread if I am upto it.
Cofty, thanks for all the chatting you do with me, you have really helped me deprogram and I apreciate it. Kate xx
-
Viviane
Flamegrilled, your analogies are still broken. Not buying a car doesn't = not generous. Also, a not generous act isn't equivalent to negligence. Finally, in soccer, hockey, Australian and American football and rugby, backwards moves are part of a valid strategy with the entire field visible and an explantion for the call.
In the first, you are trying to claim an equivalence between a non-harmful non-action and and a deadly non-action. In the second, you are trying to create an equivalence between a visible, well know and explainable strategy or tactic and an unknown ungraspable unexplainable deadly non-action. In neither case are those equivalent.
-
Simon
You are a generous father. Does every action taken in isolation reflect that? Your daughter asks you for a high powered sports car as soon as she passes her driving test. Let's say you have the power to buy it i.e. it's easily affordable to you. Should we expect every action you make (or do not make) to reflect your generous personality? If we take your decision in isolation (assuming that you are a sensible parent who withholds it because of care for her safety) does this non-action in isolation reflect your entire personality as non-generous?
It's pretty obvious that you'd be looking for the best outcome and happiness for your daughter so you'd probably make sure she received proper and clear instructions if you were to buy her the car or else explain clearly why you care about her and why it would be a bad idea to buy it for her.
I doubt you'd kill her for praying to the wrong god, oops, I mean asking for the wrong car ... unless you are an exceptionally evil being.
If you simply puncher her in the face and left it as a 'mystery' as to why ... would you still be a loving and generous father?
Now you will say ... explain how killing a gazillion people = passing a soccer ball, blah.
Of course, wouldn't anyone with any sense point out the exceptionally poor analogy.
You simply cannot come up with a good analogy for why killing or allowing hundreds of thousands of children to die in agony could ever be remotely described as loving or attributed to a loving god which is why you will inevitably resort to the lame "mystery" argument.
-
cofty
Whilst the statement may be true, the way you are framing it is an oversimplification. What you are really asking us to agree is:
God is love therefore every act or lack of action taken in isolation must definable as an act of love. - Flamegrilled
Yes every act or lack of action must be perfectly loving even if it is not immediately obvious how it is loving.
The alternative is to admit that some acts or inactions of god don't just appear unloving, they really are unloving. But that is impossible for the god of theism.
Therefore number 6 follows - allowing a tsunami to drown a quarter of a million people is a perfect act of love - even if Flamegrilled can't work out how.
You are confusing what is loving with what seems loving in order to avoid the damning conclusion.
-
adamah
Besty hinted at the fundamental problem here, on page 68, when he said this:
@flamegrilled - you are arguing for "this is possible". I am beyond that to "what is probable"
That's it, in a nutshell, since ALL of the various theodocies attempting to address 'the problem of evil' (including 'natural evil') share the following characteristics:
1) Reliance on the use of INDUCTIVE reasoning (i.e. going from general principles of the nature of God to create specific explanations as to why God failed to intervene).
With inductive reasoning, the 'burden of proof' is incredibly low (as discussed below), since believers need only show their proposed solution(s) are merely 'plausible/possible', and NOT prove that the claim is PROBABLE. The explanation(s) needs to only offer a glimmer of hope, the least-bit of possibility of being true, in order to be valid, esp when many operate in PARALLEL.
Again, that determination requires use of values, which are variable (since different people carry different world-views and values).
2) The question of theodicy arises from uncertainty, and hence we MUST revert to a probabilistic analysis, or else fruitlessly expend energy and time by chasing after certainty (AKA absolutes) when none exist.
The theist is 'appealing to uncertainty' when they cite God's ineffability/benign neglect/need to know defenses, and it IS intellectually-honest valid reasoning, since it IS honest to admit to not knowing, when it's DISHONEST to claim to KNOW what we don't know! Honest scientists and perfectly-rational people do it ALL THE TIME, admitting that 'known unknowns' exist, and in fact the very premise is what DRIVES further scientific inquiry, trying to answer questions (where we answer one, and inevitably two more questions arise).
'Appealing to uncertainty' is what agnostics rely upon when they say they don't have enough information to make a decision on the existence of God, so they remain neutral, undecided. So on the 'problem of evil', the theist is using the EXACT SAME APPROACH as an agnostic, saying there's not enough information to 'connect the dots' between God and natural evil, and hence they're not willing to "curse God and die" by blaming God for 'natural evil'.
Don't confuse remaining neutral on the matter with the logical fallacy called, 'appealing to ignorance/uncertainty': this occurs when someone uses a lack of knowledge upon which to base their conclusion, i.e. "we don't X, THEREFORE we should do Y". It's flawed reasoning, since they've assumed a conclusion is true, based ONLY on the absense of evidence itself. That's potentially a fallacy (not always, since they just might end up with the correct (valid) conclusion, via pure dumb luck). Like the old saying goes, "the absense of evidence is NOT evidence of absense" (which tacitly assumes that an exhaustive and thorough search has already been conducted, and has come up empty-handed).
As I said above, the 'burden of proof' in inductive proof is low, since it relies on probabilities:
http://www.freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Logical_Fallacies_by_Todangst
Argument from Uncertainty
This is a bit different from Arguing from Ignorance. Arguing from uncertainty occurs when one attempts to use the tentative nature of inductive claims as a reason, in of itself, to reject an inductive claim. Inductive claims are accepted or rejected on a probabilistic basis, as per their evidence.
Consider the following table:
Continuum of Truth
Absolute truth Most likely true Maybe true Probably false Defintely False Tautologies Theory of Gravity Kant's Categories "Big Foot" Contradictions Here we can see that whereas mountains of evidence exist to support the notion of gravity, there is but a dearth of evidence to support "Big Foot' Therefore, while both ideas lie along the continuum, they are hardly equitable in truth value. We can reasonably reject Big foot claims, while we can reasonably accept claims about gravity.
3) ALL theodicies rely on the presupposition of a belief in God.
So trying to take God out of the question of theodicy is impossible, since whether God is explicitly stated (as a supposition) or not (as a presupposition), the question of theodicy revolves around a belief in God, in the first place, and trying to EXCUSE the actions of God!
That goes to the valid point Outlaw brought up, a few pages ago (on pg 66):
It`s 66 pages of arguing about something you don`t believe in.. 66 pages about a subject (The existance of God) neither side can prove..
Cofty responded with:
"Nobody is arguing about the existence of god. We are discussing whether christian theism can account for natural evil....."
NOTE the words CHRISTIAN THEISM in Cofty's response, which is a belief system that is BUILT on the existence of God.
So the fly in the ointment of Cofty's approach of challenging Xian theism via attacking theodicies is that the believer already HAS hurdled over the more-problematic BINARY (yes/no) question of accepting a belief in God without demanding evidence, in the first place, and theodocies rest UPON that foundation, and worse, the 'problem of evil' allows for a smorgasborg approach of multiple answers which need only be plausible to accept. If a believer is willing to unskeptically accept the existence of God with no tangible evidence, the horse is already out of the barn....
However, it's relatively easy to prove ANY claim, esp if one is willing to pull a fast one by "stacking the deck" in their favor, and hoping no one else will notice:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_pleading
Adam
-
Simon
We are not trying to prove that god doesn't exist, just get an admission that there is no evidence that he does exist.
Every theist should admit this because if there were evidence then they would not need faith. That they claim to have faith is proof that they have no evidence. That they seek to present evidence shows the true weakness of their faith.
Of course theists love to try to twist the debate into proving that god doesn't exist (impossible) because otherwise they have nothing really to say other than "I believe [whatever nonsense]" where [whatever nonsense] simply depends upon where you are in the world and what parents they were born to.
Trying to claim the arguments are equal and something "neither side can prove" is disengenuous and an attempt to make them appear of equal strength which they are not. Theists struggle to reconcile bad events with a loving deity as we have seen - lots of squirming, lots of shuffling of feet, lots of resorting to the "mystery" (non) argument.
The reality is that theism is totally dependent on ignorance of facts, flip-flopping arguments, tradition and no small amount of hysteria.