The God Paradox

[xjx388]

I was responding to YOUR lion stuff... this had nothing to do with the engineer stuff.

But you know that and the mephitic statement above reflects that dissimulation and ruse.




Yet another casuistic ruse ... I already said numerous times that suffering is not what the OP is about... but you know that.

It is about Imbecilic Inept Incompetent Design ... but I guess this is too much to argue against so it is easier to keep repeating the mantra of "Greater Good"

How do you know that the design is flawed? You can only judge it from your own, limited perspective. If there is a creator entity, it would have to exist on a level you can’t understand. What look like flaws to you may actually serve some purpose for it. Or maybe it’s impossible for it to create things that have no flaws.

Unfortunately ... deliberate bungling does not bode well for the WISHFUL THINKING that is called "greater good" assumption.




And if you watched the movie you would see how it debunked and proven the fallaciousness of this "Greater good" hoodwinking.

It did no such thing. It was, after all, just a movie.

 

[Chanakya]

That is consistent with the "God is impossible" argument which is a completely different type of argument.

If we assume that actual free will is possible and that is what God intended then my post holds.

Fair enough. Agreed, if God is anything like what theists believe he is, then that opens the floodgates for lots of supernatural things happening, including quite literally free will. So that to start with the (otherwise perfectly cromulent) position that free will is an illusion would, in this kind of a discussion at least, amount to begging the question, agreed.

 

[Leumas]

How do you know that the design is flawed?

This is how I know... humans (and animals) are biologically less self-maintaining than Bacteria... in fact so much so that without bacteria in and on our bodies we would perish.

1. "Bacteria can synthesize all 20 proteinogenic amino acids, including the nine essential amino acids required for mammalian growth."
2. "The human body uses amino acids to make proteins to help the body... Grow... Repair body tissue... Perform many other body functions... Amino acids can also be used as a source of energy by the body.... Essential amino acids cannot be made by the body. As a result, they must come from food."

You can only judge it from your own, limited perspective. If there is a creator entity, it would have to exist on a level you can’t understand.

So this is your god hypothesis then?? One that you cannot understand but you do understand that it creates some thing that can auto-regenerate without resorting to killing but then it goes on to create other things that have to kill and all this is for some purpose you do not understand but you understand that much about it.

Well... see if other god-imaginers can agree with you on that... and if they do please tell them to stop telling us what this god they do not understand is telling them to tell us.

What look like flaws to you may actually serve some purpose for it.

So it makes bacteria able to exist without needing to eat other bacteria ... but it decided to make animals incomplete and would need bacteria to survive as well as killing other animals and eating them??

Also it seems that bacteria can exist anywhere on the planet and even in the outer atmosphere ... but most animals cannot... least of all humans.

So it must be the Bacterium God hypothesis that created bacteria in his image and told them to go forth and multiply and have dominion over every thing on earth.

Or maybe it’s impossible for it to create things that have no flaws.

Tell that to the other god-imaginers ... see if they agree with your version.

But... it did bacteria did it not... so it can create things that at least can be self-sufficient in creating the amino acids they need.

It did no such thing. It was, after all, just a movie.

Yes it did... and yes it is a movie but GDon said

Yes, that movie invoked the "Greater Good" principle as well.

And if you watched the movie you would see how it debunked and proved the fallaciousness of this "Greater good" hoodwinking... that is the theme of the movie and if you watch it you would see the ending.

 

[psionl0]

Fair enough. Agreed, if God is anything like what theists believe he is, then that opens the floodgates for lots of supernatural things happening, including quite literally free will. So that to start with the (otherwise perfectly cromulent) position that free will is an illusion would, in this kind of a discussion at least, amount to begging the question, agreed.

In a deterministic universe, there is obviously no such thing as free will. Every act is effectively pre-programmed.

In a probabilistic universe? Then it becomes a case of "you can't prove a negative".

 

[psionl0]

To be fair, in this particular instance, he (that is to say, the poster you're referencing) never actually comes out and admits to anything. I've had the dubious pleasure of dancing the dance with him in a different thread, started by him; doing which finally made clear to me the reason for the kind of reaction he (sometimes/often) elicits from (some) people. Which is why I'd asked him ---- straightforwardly, and clearly explaining my reasons for asking ---- to clarify once and for all what exactly his particular position is on the God question and the religion question. It shouldn't take anyone more than a short sentence or two, and hardly a minute of their time, to clearly summarize their broad position after all.

Suppose the poster said, "I believe in God-X as described in cherry picked passages A, B, C, D, ... in version Y of religious text Z". Have you got any idea of how many extra pages that would add to this thread? (And none of them would have anything to do with the OP).

 

[xjx388]

This is how I know... humans (and animals) are biologically less self-maintaining than Bacteria... in fact so much so that without bacteria in and on our bodies we would perish.

1. "Bacteria can synthesize all 20 proteinogenic amino acids, including the nine essential amino acids required for mammalian growth."
2. "The human body uses amino acids to make proteins to help the body... Grow... Repair body tissue... Perform many other body functions... Amino acids can also be used as a source of energy by the body.... Essential amino acids cannot be made by the body. As a result, they must come from food."

So this is your god hypothesis then?? One that you cannot understand but you do understand that it creates some thing that can auto-regenerate without resorting to killing but then it goes on to create other things that have to kill and all this is for some purpose you do not understand but you understand that much about it.

Well... see if other god-imaginers can agree with you on that... and if they do please tell them to stop telling us what this god they do not understand is telling them to tell us.




So it makes bacteria able to exist without needing to eat other bacteria ... but it decided to make animals incomplete and would need bacteria to survive as well as killing other animals and eating them??

Also it seems that bacteria can exist anywhere on the planet and even in the outer atmosphere ... but most animals cannot... least of all humans.

So it must be the Bacterium God hypothesis that created bacteria in his image and told them to go forth and multiply and have dominion over every thing on earth.




Tell that to the other god-imaginers ... see if they agree with your version.

But... it did bacteria did it not... so it can create things that at least can be self-sufficient in creating the amino acids they need.




Yes it did... and yes it is a movie but GDon said



And if you watched the movie you would see how it debunked and proved the fallaciousness of this "Greater good" hoodwinking... that is the theme of the movie and if you watch it you would see the ending.

I’m not concerned with what theists in general believe. I’m just pointing out that your analysis is a bit shallow. Now maybe you have pointed out some of the flaws re: some common beliefs about God. But yours aren’t really new arguments at all and they don’t certainly debunk any and all possible creator entities.

All I can say about it is if there is a creator entity, it can’t be anything like what is described in common religious beliefs. I don’t dismiss the possibility of such an entity, I just don’t think it really matters.

You say that it can create a self-sustaining bacteria but then decides to create more complex yet not as self-sustaining creatures like us. You see that as evidence of an incompetent designer. I don’t think that necessarily follows. Maybe it was a stepwise progression. A simple bacteria is good at keeping itself going without killing others (which is not really completely true) but not much else. A basic understanding of biology tells us that more complex forms of life need lower forms of life to feed on or to support them in other ways. And it goes both ways, lower forms depend on higher forms as well; the bacteria in our gut feed on the fiber in our diets AND help us break it down.

It’s not perfect, but it works. I seriously doubt it, but I guess it’s possible that a creator entity somehow put all this into motion. That entity would be nothing like what people commonly think of god.

 

[GDon]

I was responding to YOUR lion stuff... this had nothing to do with the engineer stuff.

Yes, it did. It's called "Fit For Purpose". How can you call a design "faulty" if you don't know the purpose behind the design?

Imagine a god-Leumas creating a being who could exist on sunlight. No bacteria required! You just know that there would be a human-Leumas sitting on his solar-equivalent toilet saying "Why do I have to absorb sunlight? Surely god-Leumas could have made me so that I DON'T have to absorb sunlight. There is a flaw in the design!"

Or imagine that god-Leumas creates a being that doesn't even need sunlight and which could live for a million years. There would be some human-Leumas saying "Why can't I live for two million years? There is a flaw in the design!"

Is the design fit for purpose? That's the question. If there is a God, then the answer has to be "yes". But fit for God's purpose, not unfortunately fit for Leumas' purpose.

I like Woody Allen's comment: "Life is full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly."

 

[Myriad]

WOW... amazing...

But I thank you deeply for exposing the extent of emotions this OP has stirred...

I appreciate you letting me know it.

I'm glad you appreciate my concern for your well-being. As I said, I don't think you actually find living in the world so objectionable that you'd prefer not to exist. But you're suggesting theists should, so it's hard to tell.

 

[Myriad]

I’m not concerned with what theists in general believe. I’m just pointing out that your analysis is a bit shallow. Now maybe you have pointed out some of the flaws re: some common beliefs about God. But yours aren’t really new arguments at all and they don’t certainly debunk any and all possible creator entities.

Indeed. The same basic arguments and complaints are explored in the book of Job. The "answers" given there might not be adequate or sound, but it does show that the questions have occurred to other people before.

 

[zooterkin]

Please keep to the topic of the thread, and avoid breaching your MA, particularly with regards to rule 0, rule 11 and rule 12!

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: zooterkin

 

[acbytesla]

Your fundamental mistake here is in thinking that it is my deadbeat sky daddy. I'm as much of an atheist as you are. I'm just not a dick about it.

I'm not sure what this means.

I could care less if religion was benign. But it's not. It's not sunshine and roses and loving your neighbors. I'd love it if it was 75 percent of what Jesus taught in the Bible. But this belief has had a horrible and deadly effect on our country and the planet.

Beliefs inform our actions. And religions are anti-logic, anti-science and anti-humanity. They have caused poverty and suffering in Africa, South America and here in the United States.

 

[Leumas]

I'm not sure what this means.

I could care less if religion was benign. But it's not. It's not sunshine and roses and loving your neighbors. I'd love it if it was 75 percent of what Jesus taught in the Bible. But this belief has had a horrible and deadly effect on our country and the planet.

Beliefs inform our actions. And religions are anti-logic, anti-science and anti-humanity. They have caused poverty and suffering in Africa, South America and here in the United States.

Hear hear!!!

 

[acbytesla]

Hear hear!!!


[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_5128262c73999df2f5.jpg[/qimg]

Thank you. I just wish it wasn't true.

BTW, Leumas. There is no evidence that Twain said "It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled." He said things that were in that vein But that quote is most likely mis-attributed to Twain.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/12/23/fooled/

 

[Leumas]

Yes, it did. It's called "Fit For Purpose". How can you call a design "faulty" if you don't know the purpose behind the design?

When it falls on my head and cripples me... I do not give a gnat's ******** what is the purpose ... I will know that the designer is an incompetent fetid turd.... unless his purpose was to make it fall on my head then s/he is criminal and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and spend the rest of his miserable existence in prison.

Imagine a god-Leumas creating a being who could exist on sunlight. No bacteria required! You just know that there would be a human-Leumas sitting on his solar-equivalent toilet saying "Why do I have to absorb sunlight? Surely god-Leumas could have made me so that I DON'T have to absorb sunlight. There is a flaw in the design!"

Imagine a GDon-god who could have made a Gdon-human who could ever think logically and realize that apologetics like the above are absolute claptrap.

Or imagine that god-Leumas creates a being that doesn't even need sunlight and which could live for a million years. There would be some human-Leumas saying "Why can't I live for two million years? There is a flaw in the design!"

Imagine a GDon-god who could have made Gdon-human who would stop imagining casuistry.

Is the design fit for purpose? That's the question. If there is a God, then the answer has to be "yes". But fit for God's purpose, not unfortunately fit for Leumas' purpose.

And if the victims of this god's purpose say that this god is a mephitic sadistic monster they would be absolutely justified.

I like Woody Allen's comment: "Life is full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly."

He was a pedophile... but at least he understood the imbecility and turpitude of his god-concept.

 

[Leumas]

Thank you. I just wish it wasn't true.

BTW, Leumas. There is no evidence that Twain said "It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled." He said things that were in that vein But that quote is most likely mis-attributed to Twain.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/12/23/fooled/

Maybe we are then allowed to just use the aphorism without having to attribute it to anyone. However... I love Twain and do not mind attributing it to him since it is as clever and witty and wise as most of the other stuff he says.

• "Faith is believing what you know ain't so" -- Mark Twain
• "I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's." -- Mark Twain
• "Zeal and sincerity can carry a new religion further than any other missionary except fire and sword." -- Mark Twain
• "We have to keep our God placated with prayers, and even then we are never sure of him... Our illogical God is all-powerful in name, but impotent in fact..." -- Mark Twain

 

[Leumas]

I’m not concerned with what theists in general believe. I’m just pointing out that your analysis is a bit shallow.

I would say that the shallowness you perceive comes from your inability to fathom it and the information it is built upon deeply.

Now maybe you have pointed out some of the flaws re: some common beliefs about God. But yours aren’t really new arguments at all

Ah well thanks for pointing that out... funny enough so is your apologetics too not new in any way.

Given that my arguments are not new and your casuistry is not either... then this forum ought to just pack it up and we all need to stop talking here ... is that your goal??

and they don’t certainly debunk any and all possible creator entities.

Yes they do... you just cannot perceive it or fathom it from under that smothering apologetics pall.

All I can say about it is if there is a creator entity, it can’t be anything like what is described in common religious beliefs. I don’t dismiss the possibility of such an entity, I just don’t think it really matters.

Yes and so I can say about Pixie Dust too... unfalsifiable wishful thinking and conjectures are not a valid argument ... just a fallacy.

You say that it can create a self-sustaining bacteria but then decides to create more complex yet not as self-sustaining creatures like us. You see that as evidence of an incompetent designer. I don’t think that necessarily follows. Maybe it was a stepwise progression. A simple bacteria is good at keeping itself going without killing others (which is not really completely true) but not much else.

If only you knew what a complex organism is made of... you would realize the error in what you said above.

A basic understanding of biology tells us that more complex forms of life need lower forms of life to feed on or to support them in other ways.

Yes this is called REALITY... and god-concepts when conjectured in the realm of reality cause a paradox which implies that they are false.

And it goes both ways, lower forms depend on higher forms as well; the bacteria in our gut feed on the fiber in our diets AND help us break it down.

Thanks for describing REALITY... not what god-concepts are.

It’s not perfect, but it works. I seriously doubt it, but I guess it’s possible that a creator entity somehow put all this into motion. That entity would be nothing like what people commonly think of god.

Exactly... god-concepts are falsified by reality... unless one's god-concept is not based in anything that has to do with reality... well done... you got it.

 

[Leumas]

I'm glad you appreciate my concern for your well-being. As I said, I don't think you actually find living in the world so objectionable that you'd prefer not to exist. But you're suggesting theists should, so it's hard to tell.

Your interminable strawmanning and ad hominems are a risible and very trite apologetics shenanigan ... it is also known as wafting red herrings.


But please... do carry on... it just exposes for me the extent of the success of my OP... thanks!!!!

 

[Leumas]

Indeed. The same basic arguments and complaints are explored in the book of Job. The "answers" given there might not be adequate or sound, but it does show that the questions have occurred to other people before.

OK... so since the book of Job says it all... then why does this forum exist?... should we all just pack it up and stop saying things that Job said??

 

[acbytesla]

Maybe we are then allowed to just use the aphorism without having to attribute it to anyone. However... I love Twain and do not mind attributing it to him since it is as clever and witty and wise as most of the other stuff he says.

• "Faith is believing what you know ain't so" -- Mark Twain
• "I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's." -- Mark Twain
• "Zeal and sincerity can carry a new religion further than any other missionary except fire and sword." -- Mark Twain
• "We have to keep our God placated with prayers, and even then we are never sure of him... Our illogical God is all-powerful in name, but impotent in fact..." -- Mark Twain

I do too. Probably my favorite writer. Him or Dickens. It sounds so much like Twain. He was also good friends with Tesla. There's an interesting story about Twain visiting Tesla's lab. He sat in a chair that Tesla made that vibrates and electrically stimulates the person in it. Let's just say it triggered a bowel movement.

 

[xjx388]

I would say that the shallowness you perceive comes from your inability to fathom it and the information it is built upon deeply.




Ah well thanks for pointing that out... funny enough so is your apologetics too not new in any way.

Given that my arguments are not new and your casuistry is not either... then this forum ought to just pack it up and we all need to stop talking here ... is that your goal??




Yes they do... you just cannot perceive it or fathom it from under that smothering apologetics pall.




Yes and so I can say about Pixie Dust too... unfalsifiable wishful thinking and conjectures are not a valid argument ... just a fallacy.



If only you knew what a complex organism is made of... you would realize the error in what you said above.




Yes this is called REALITY... and god-concepts when conjectured in the realm of reality cause a paradox which implies that they are false.




Thanks for describing REALITY... not what gods-concepts are.



Exactly god-concepts are falsified by reality... unless one's god-concept is not based in anything that has to do with reality... well done... you got it.

As I said, nothing new here. Hashed, rehashed -covered and smothered as they might say at Waffle House.

No, that doesn’t mean we should drop the whole thing. I just wish someone, for once, came up with something new.

And your argument doesn’t actually disprove an imperfect god who created and just left us to our own devices. Maybe they exist in another universe or whatever trying to improve on their creations? Doesn’t really matter in such a case. I just don’t see a paradox in your argument that disproves such imperfect, disinterested creator entities.

Further, your argument may be enough for people who are already atheists or people questioning their beliefs but they aren’t enough to sway committed believers. It was very similar arguments, that I heard when I was in my questioning phase, that ultimately turned me away from my already lax Catholic upbringing and ultimately belief in any god as conceived in established religions. So I have no objection to raising such things here again, I just think it’s a matter of preaching a tired old sermon to an already convinced and bored choir.