My case for why there is no conscious, seperate entity such as God (Bible-like God, that is)

POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Sunday, March 19, 2006 08:14
VIEWED: 18094
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Look at a baby or a small child. Can you imagine for one moment letting that small person die or become crippled or painfully injured if you had the absolute power to prevent it? Standing by and letting such events occur without changing them given the ability to easily do so would be evil, right?

So either God doesn't exist as an all-powerful conscious and seperate entity (I mean, he can't be evil, right?), or he's off on some kind of 2,000 year errand, and just doesn't know what's been goin' down here on Earth...

I challenge anyone to debate me logically on this (and none of that "We can't understand the mysteries and the purpose blagh blagh blagh, what purpose can a suffering innocent that dies at one or two serve that couldn't be achieved in any other way?- remember if God is all-powerful, his methods can be unlimited)

Chrisisall, ready to burn in Hell

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I had an interesting discussion with a Muslim co-work about a similar topic. It's interesting because for the first few hundred years Muslim clerics collected Jewish and early Christian documents including stuff that never made it into Christain Canon. Consequently they have an interesting take on this question.

They believe that God set the world in motion but doesn't macromanage it. If he interviened too much then he negates free will, so the natural world runs itself with only occasional tweaks if things start going terribly wrong.

So if your child dies, that's just an effect of nature or of men's free choice not really God's doing at all. As a consequence they don't blame God for bad stuff happening or think he's asleep on the job if he doesn't stop it. Nature is nature and God is God.

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God does not make 'sick' or disabled children. God is not a master puppeteer. Sin causes many of the worlds problems due to mans disobedience to Gods will. And besides, why would God go where he was not asked too? No, hes a gentleman

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The universe is pretty efficient in its pattern of growth; energy becomes matter, returns to a state of energy, on and on, with nothing left out of balance for long, and no possibility of ‘waste’.

The idea of ‘a god’, who has ‘a plan’ doesn’t fit into my thinking, because that would mean that everything; every act, every motion on every level of existence would be scripted, and where would be the fun in that for anyone who would be god?

I see the universe as being supportive of forward motion – call it life or evolution, but neutral in regard to the freedom to act as we choose (insofar as it is possible to think that we have real choice, affected by a myriad of influences from DNA to social programming, to the fact that we ourselves are host to our own universe of tiny creatures), because within that freedom to act as we choose is the balance that must eventually be achieved. To that end, I suspect that we are all bound to this creation, forever, and that ultimately we are one with everything. So, in the world according to me, you’re stuck with me guys, better get used to it because I am you.

Aztecs used the term firefly metaphorically, meaning a spark of knowledge in a world of ignorance or darkness.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by chrisisall:
So either God doesn't exist as an all-powerful conscious and seperate entity (I mean, he can't be evil, right?), or he's off on some kind of 2,000 year errand, and just doesn't know what's been goin' down here on Earth...

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It would have to be a longer errand then 2000 years, since the kind of thing your talking about was more common over 2000 years ago then today, at least, per capita in the Western world. And I think that is part of the problem. God was never looked upon as a feel good character, as some people want to present him today. The concept of God in the Bible evolved in a world where the responsibility to act and think correctly was solely placed on the shoulders of men, not God, and in some ways this makes the Biblical brimstone and fire depiction of god more mature and more natural then the depiction held by some of the more “liberal” religions. We live in a world today where we have a standard of living that is unprecedented in all of human history, and we take that for granted, but the truth is that it is our lofty standard of living and our arrogant depiction of ourselves that is unnatural, not god.

But Cicero had a way of looking at it that I find very agreeable, which is that the absence of the interference of god in our life is the presents of freedom. Cicero had a very libertarian view of god. This is what he had to say in one of his many works, called The Nature of the Gods.

Quote:

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“You Stoics are also fond of asking us, Balbus, what is the mode of life of the gods and how they pass their days. The answer is, their life is the happiest conceivable, and the one most bountifully furnished with all good things. God is entirely inactive and free from all ties of occupation; he toils not neither does he labor, but he takes delight in his own wisdom and virtue, and knows with absolute certainty that he will always enjoy pleasures at once consummate and everlasting.
“This is the god whom we should call happy in the proper sense of the term; your Stoic god seems to us to be grievously overworked. If the world itself is god, what can be less restful than to revolve at incredible speed round the axis of the heavens without a single moment of respite? But repose is an essential condition of happiness. If on the other hand some god resides within the world as its governor and pilot, maintaining the courses of the stars, the changes of the seasons, and all the ordered processes of creation, and keeping a watch on land and sea to guard the interests and lives of men, why, what a bondage of irksome and laborious business is his!
“We for our part deem happiness to consist in tranquillity of mind and entire exemption from all duties. For he who taught us all the rest has also taught us that the world was made by nature, without needing an artificer to construct it, and that the act of creation, which according to you cannot be performed without divine skill, is so easy, that nature will create, is creating, and has created worlds without number. You on the contrary cannot see how nature can achieve all this without the aid of some intelligence, and so, like the tragic poets, being unable to the plot of your drama to a dénouement, you have recourse to a god; whose intervention you assuredly would not require if you would but contemplate the measureless and boundless extent of space that stretches in every direction, into which when the mind projects and propels itself, it journeys onward far and wide without ever sighting any margin or ultimate point where it can stop. Well then, in this immensity of length and breadth and height there flits an infinite quantity of atoms innumerable, which though separated by void yet cohere together, and taking hold each of another form unions wherefrom are created those shapes and forms of things which you think cannot be created without the aid of bellows and anvils, and so have saddled us with an eternal master, whom day and night we are to fear; for who would not fear a prying busybody of a god, who fore

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