God's purpose

turingtest said:
If there was (is) a god-creator...imagine being a disembodied, pure and perfect awareness, existing for eternity in absolute isolation from anything but itself to be aware of- an action of self-regard without beginning or end, untainted (and unrelieved) by context that could give meaning to the idea of "self." Anyone who has ever stacked brittle hours tossing and turning in the fever of insomnia can grasp the thin edge of the feeling, of an eternal and breathless insomnia, but without even the mitigation of tossing and turning, since there's no body to toss and no space to turn in.

"Let there be light!" was a desperate blurt, a plea more than a command; creation an act of necessity in relief of an isolation and boredom so complete as to satisfy one definition of insanity. Now he's just trolling...
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It could have been a hallucination but when I experienced the Ultimate Creator, there were no such problems. It did not sleep. It did not fear death or have pain. And it could think about all sorts of things.

It did get bored and so it "dreamed up" the Universe with God and Satan. Lacking a body was not problem.

You make the mistake many atheists accuse theists of making - humanizing the Ultimate Creator.

God, as part of the dream, may have some human characteristics regarding intelligence and wanting good.
 
halleyscomet said:
And that point sure, but then he pulls crap like ordering rape victims to marry their rapists if the rapist has enough silver coins to pay the fee and all that empathy goes out the window.
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The ultimate punishment - having to marry the victim. She will make his life hell, and he will have to endure it. And still have to support her and her children. Imagine what she puts in his food?

Of course, perhaps giving her a knife and letting her have her way with him might be a bit more balanced.
 
PartSkeptic said:
The ultimate punishment - having to marry the victim. She will make his life hell, and he will have to endure it. And still have to support her and her children. Imagine what she puts in his food?

Of course, perhaps giving her a knife and letting her have her way with him might be a bit more balanced.
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Is that meant to be a joke, or are you serious that it's okay because the rape victim can get revenge? What if she doesn't want to spend her future plotting how to make a criminal's life hell? What if she wants to put it behind her, marry a man she loves or start/continue a career?

If you're joking, I'll just go have my irony meter recalibrated, but it struck me as serious.
 
PartSkeptic said:
The ultimate punishment - having to marry the victim. She will make his life hell, and he will have to endure it. And still have to support her and her children. Imagine what she puts in his food?

Of course, perhaps giving her a knife and letting her have her way with him might be a bit more balanced.
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The very notion is sick and abhorrent. Perhaps it pleases you to subscribe to such a notion, but it is not a pretty look. It certainly will colour everyone's opinion of you irreparably forever.
 
@ Abaddon - Well said.

And Pup for pointing out the obvious.
 
Emily's Cat said:
If there is a god, I'm gonna say he needs to lay off the weed/meth/peyote cocktail
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If there is a god/God (creator of the universe), it's about time he showed up!

X-thousand years and still and still no sign of the guy (he is supposed to be a bloke, apparently) ... despite literally billions of situations where people were desperately hoping he would turn up and save the situation.

But still no sign, and still no evidence (well, mountains of evidence against, but none for).
 
If you think of God as something or someone that is outside of yourself just waiting to rescue any of us then your looking for the wrong kind of evidence IMO.
 
Speaking hypothetically, it's nothing a little foxglove cut up in a salad wouldn't solve. However, if you lived in a culture that forced you to marry your rapist chances are the second husband wouldn't be a vast improvement.
 
Pup said:
Is that meant to be a joke, or are you serious that it's okay because the rape victim can get revenge? What if she doesn't want to spend her future plotting how to make a criminal's life hell? What if she wants to put it behind her, marry a man she loves or start/continue a career?

If you're joking, I'll just go have my irony meter recalibrated, but it struck me as serious.
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Not serious at all. The cockney slang for a wife is "my ball and chain".
 
abaddon said:
The very notion is sick and abhorrent. Perhaps it pleases you to subscribe to such a notion, but it is not a pretty look. It certainly will colour everyone's opinion of you irreparably forever.
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It seems I certainly offended a lot of sensibilities with an attempt at humor.

Some people can dish it out, but not take it?

A little more seriously. On this forum there are many who often express the viewpoint that "different cultures have different morals and that is okay because there are no moral absolutes". Yet on some subjects there is shock and horror based on "rightful moral indignation". Is this not a double standard?

For the record. I am against rape, and think rapists should be punished in an appropriate manner, and the victim should be treated with sympathy.
 
IanS said:
If there is a god/God (creator of the universe), it's about time he showed up!

X-thousand years and still and still no sign of the guy (he is supposed to be a bloke, apparently) ... despite literally billions of situations where people were desperately hoping he would turn up and save the situation.

But still no sign, and still no evidence (well, mountains of evidence against, but none for).
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The cry of frustration resounds. I am with you IanS ........ show us something for Christ's sake God. We are waiting.:(
 
Jodie said:
If you think of God as something or someone that is outside of yourself just waiting to rescue any of us then your looking for the wrong kind of evidence IMO.
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Well I'm not actually "looking" (as you put it), because I think that by now, if there was any such evidence, then we'd have found it long ago.

But there really is only one "kind" of evidence, and that is real material, reproducible, measurable properly existing things which can be detected and studied by objective science, at least in principle if not directly in practice at any particular moment in time.

If instead the best that the faithful can offer is that we should listen to stories about peoples feelings for God, about their beliefs of apparent "intelligent design" all around us, about claims that the existence of the universe is itself evidence of God, or about any such mystical, vague or misguided ideas as "evidence", then it should be made clear to them (for their own sake, apart from anything else) that such things are not evidence of an intelligent Creator God.

The fact that the symmetry of snowflakes (or any crystals) may look as if it has been intelligently designed, or the fact that humans and the universe exist, may be evidence of all sorts of things. But it is not evidence of a biblical-type creator God.

In biblical times people believed that almost everything was direct evidence of God - thunder & lightening, earthquakes, floods, night turning to day, disease, death, famine ... it was all the direct work of God. And thousands of people (even millions) swore that they had personally witnessed not only God, but angels, demons, the devil and all sorts of heavenly creatures actually causing all these events.

But when mankind eventually discovered what we now call modern science, roughly from the time of Galileo circa.1600, slowly each of those things was explained by science and shown to be nothing at all to do with any God.

Now in 2016 we are at a point where almost all original God claims have been completely explained to show that none of those things were ever evidence of any God. The God claims were all untrue. None of it was evidence of God.

Today theists are really reduced to saying that there are two important questions that science has still not answered in such complete and unarguable detail as to make the explanation a "Theory". And they are (1) exactly how life first began on Earth, and (2) exactly what happened 13.7 billion years ago to produce our universe from the Big Bang.

Both of those issues are of course areas of active research. And every year thousands more research papers are published to narrow down the most likely explanations.

It's entirely possible that a very complete explanation will be found for both problems within our lifetime. But in any case, even in those two areas, with vast mountains of research discoveries about both processes, and evidence for all sorts of processes in chemistry and physics, so far even there, not a single microscopic spec of evidence for any supernatural God.
 
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PartSkeptic said:
It seems I certainly offended a lot of sensibilities with an attempt at humor.

Some people can dish it out, but not take it?

A little more seriously. On this forum there are many who often express the viewpoint that "different cultures have different morals and that is okay because there are no moral absolutes". Yet on some subjects there is shock and horror based on "rightful moral indignation". Is this not a double standard?

For the record. I am against rape, and think rapists should be punished in an appropriate manner, and the victim should be treated with sympathy.
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Do you have an example of someone who says "that is okay"?

It amazes me that people have trouble understanding the concept that an individual can have strongly-held moral beliefs, while still correctly, IMO, observing that others have different morals which they believe in just as strongly.

I strongly believe that women should have the same rights as men. I can also point out that many others believe women deserve less. I don't have to be worried that there's no god to arbitrate and say which morals are right. I know what I believe, and I believe it applies to all women everywhere.

Why must I think it's okay for others to violate human rights, just because they think it's okay?
 
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