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What you could do better than god

GDon said:
Let's say you had the power to change your children into anything you want: make them super-powerful, make them super-smart, super-confident, super-successful, no need for pain, no need to struggle. You can make it so they don't need anything. You could make them have a perfect body without working out. They could eat anything they wanted, or not even eat at all.

Any struggling that they do to get something they want is because you made it that way. Any pain that they feel is because you made it that way.

How would you remake your children? How much struggle for them to endure would you allow? How much pain would you allow? You wouldn't allow any, right?
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Why don't you take your line of reasoning to its logical conclusion and realise that there is absolutely no reason for God, as popularly understood, to do anything at all? And since there is no reason for your God to do anything at all, the very concept evaporates in a puff of logic.
 
Darat said:
Pain - it should be an option.
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This. Warning signals to say "don't do that" are good. Warning signals you can acknowledge to silence the alarm are better. Toothache could benefit from this function.

Sometimes you'll see a TV archaeologist or paleontologist pointing out signs on a skeleton that the individual had some kind of abscess. "They must have been in a lot of pain." Their warning klaxon was going off all the damned time, as if they'd put their hand in the fire or stepped on a thorn, but they hadn't and so they couldn't do anything about it except suffer pointless agony for the rest of their life.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
You are assuming God can do anything. This is not correct.
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Since this is a purely hypothetical mental exercise, I can assume whatever I damn want :p

Like, if I want to talk about what if Superman could literally shoot monkeys out his ass, I can :p

More formally: it's called an ad-absurdum. Look it up :p

Roger Ramjets said:
Again, you assume God could just 'design' a fish and have it turn out 'perfect'.
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Roger Ramjets said:
You say that if you were God you could just wave your magic wand and do anything you imagine, but how do you know that?
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I don't. But the religious folks of several religion tell me that that's how it worked. So I CAN take that as a face value for the scope of an ad-absurdum. Again, look it up.

Roger Ramjets said:
We know the real world doesn't work that way. If God exists then He is constrained by reality. If He created the Universe then He made it in a way that uses evolution - not magic - to produce fish and humans.
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Again, that's not what any reasonably mainstream religion tells me. So I don't have to disprove that via an ad-absurdum. In fact, doing that kind of "hey, lemme disprove what you or your side never claimed" would be a textbook strawman.
 
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Darat said:
Puny god. He could have done a bit of sky writing with the clouds - even put up a few pictograms for the hard of reading.
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That. Or just project an image in the sky, or on a mountain, or on a suitable local wall he created for that purpose, with a sound track that everyone hears in his or her native language. We had no problem creating open-air cinemas. I have trouble imagining that an immensely powerful God couldn't just create a big screen and a projector. It's definitely not breaking any laws of physics or anything in the universe he created, or we couldn't do it either.
 
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Olmstead said:
Why don't you take your line of reasoning to its logical conclusion and realise that there is absolutely no reason for God, as popularly understood, to do anything at all?
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Quite the opposite. If a universe that has God plus one good human being is better than a universe with God alone, which universe would God make? I think making a better universe is a good reason for God to do something.
 
GDon said:
If one of your children chooses pain, and then complained to you "why did you leave it even as an option???", how would you respond?
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"You're too flippin' stupid to even be a dog, much less a human" if it's about stuff one CAN'T and DIDN'T choose.

If I choose to shank you in the subway because I just went schizophrenic and the voices in my head told me to, that's not something YOU chose in any shape or form.

None of the kids killed in a school shooting actually chose to be shot, and for most of them it's not a result of anything THEY chose or did. NONE of the rape victims ever chose to be raped. LITERALLY. Otherwise it wouldn't be a rape. Etc.

And that's not even counting things outside of human control entirely. Like literally nobody actually chose to be a Black Death victim in the 14'th century and onwards. None of the American Natives chose to be a smallpox casualty. Nobody who died in a medieval drought or other kind of famine CHOSE to starve to death. Etc. For most it's not even the choice of someone ELSE (even if it's incredibly stupid to let X suffer for the choice of Y and call it justified), it's just something they didn't even really understand was happening.

So, uh, yeah, dumb apologetics are dumb :p
 
Darat said:
On topic if it was the topic of the conversation....
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I think it is very much on topic. The question "What could you do better than god?" is abstract when talking about generalities. But it takes on a much more personal aspect when talking about one's children.

The point is, whatever choices you make with redesigning your children's lives, some of them are going to complain "why did you do X instead of Y?"

You're God and you make pain optional. If one of your children chooses pain, and then complained to you "why did you leave it even as an option???", how would you respond?
 
HansMustermann said:
GDon said:
If one of your children chooses pain, and then complained to you "why did you leave it even as an option???", how would you respond?
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"You're too flippin' stupid to even be a dog, much less a human" if it's about stuff one CAN'T and DIDN'T choose.
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Darat's example though is something that his children can choose. If he were God, then he would give his children the option of choosing pain or no pain.

If his child chooses pain, and then complained "why did you leave it even as an option???", what's the best response from someone with God-like power who made pain optional?
 
GDon said:
Quite the opposite. If a universe that has God plus one good human being is better than a universe with God alone, which universe would God make? I think making a better universe is a good reason for God to do something.
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If something is better than nothing, then EVERY something is better than nothing. If there is "value" in this universe, there is also value in a completely different universe, or in a universe almost identical to this one in which a plane crashes into your house at this very instant. And so, if there is "value" in something, any true God would create absolutely every possible instance of existence, rendering God no better than a personification of universal chaos. That is the only conclusion to this line of reasoning.

Whether you think such a God worthy of any attention at all is up to you.
 
GDon said:
You're God and you make pain optional. If one of your children chooses pain, and then complained to you "why did you leave it even as an option???", how would you respond?
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"Ah, yeah... Well I made pain optional through the gift of leprosy, which helpfully stops people feeling pain. Turned out they no longer notice when they injure themselves and the feedback has been rather negative. I'm now looking into on the possibility of making it adjustable. Sorry for the delay.

Have you found the willow thing yet? Aspirin is quite good."
 
GDon said:
Darat's example though is something that his children can choose. If he were God, then he would give his children the option of choosing pain or no pain
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Sorta. Actually his point is that it SHOULD be optional, not that it already is and his kids chose that. His point, way I understand it, is that if a schizophrenic hearing voices shanks me, I SHOULD be able to choose the no pain option. NOT that I chose pain and blamed anyone for my choice. His point is precisely the same I was making: "Should" is precisely BECAUSE it's NOT the current way it works. Turning it into the strawman analogy that someone chose pain and blames their Father for it is just what I was saying: dumb apologetics are dumb.
 
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Well, I was in hospital for a heart episode this week. But I was asking about stuff you could do BETTER than God. And I dunno about you, but I could hardly qualify that as "better" in any meaningful sense :p
 
HansMustermann said:
Well, I was in hospital for a heart episode this week. But I was asking about stuff you could do BETTER than God. And I dunno about you, but I could hardly qualify that as "better" in any meaningful sense :p
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I had an ECG a couple of days ago. If God is omnipresent, how would they know where to stick the electrodes?

Dave
 
- Not have my eating pipe and my breathing pipe share a pipeline for a good section of my throat for no reason other then so choking is an option I have.

- Not putting the "wiring" for my eyes over what amounts to the "lens" so there's this huge blind spot I just have to hallucinate visual data for.

- "God. Why is my G-spot in my ass?" (Seen on the internet.)
 
Olmstead said:
If something is better than nothing, then EVERY something is better than nothing. If there is "value" in this universe, there is also value in a completely different universe, or in a universe almost identical to this one in which a plane crashes into your house at this very instant. And so, if there is "value" in something, any true God would create absolutely every possible instance of existence, rendering God no better than a personification of universal chaos. That is the only conclusion to this line of reasoning.
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Well, no it's not. Your conclusion doesn't follow. If it is possible to say that one universe is better than another, then why would God make an inferior one? He would make the best one. Can you explain why God would make an inferior universe?
 
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