People obsessed with theology and their religion like to think they can speak for most christians when in reality the vast majority of christians hold beliefs nothing like they themselves do. The vast majority of christians know very little about the bible or theology, certainly a lot less than myself and virtually none of them would agree with you that god is not a god.

To say that god is “Being Itself, the reason there is something rather than nothing.” is really a pathetic attempt to sound deep in the hope that your ambigous and nebulous statement will encourage those who disagree with you to think you know something they don’t. B.S. doesn’t impress me Liam, save it for yourself.

To say “He cannot make good evil or evil good. And He cannot act contrary to His nature.” is merely circular logic people use to claim god decides what is moral but that the implications of that do not apply. For example, if god determines what is moral and said to you “When the next innocent child you see comes around the corner I want you to do the moral thing and rape it and set it on fire”. Would you agree that your god determines what is moral and therefore that action would be moral? If you agree then I can accept that you believe your god determines what is moral. If you say no that is not moral then that means you have a moral standard that is independent from your god, a morality that has nothing to do with a god but is based on harm and culpability. If you say (as you’ve already suggested you will) “god cannot act contrary to his nature and would not do that” you’re using circular logic and avoiding the question by saying god is good because its his nature. However, if you didn’t have a concept of morality seperate from your god, one based in culpability and harm it would never cross your mind that it would be immoral for you god to tell you to rape and set fire to an innocent child. If you didn’t have a morality that has nothing to do with the bible and your god you would see no contradiction whatsoever in god telling such a command was moral. Its only because you have a sense of right and wrong derived from extensive personal experience and interaction with others you’ll deny your god could issue such a command and it would be moral.

You say that your god being ominipotent doesn’t mean he can do anything and that point goes more to my argument than to yours.

If you posit a god with the astounding ability to create the universe and the people in it it it isn’t plausible that he couldn’t have created people without the will to do evil and it certainly isn’t plausible that he couldn’t see a world without evil is infinitely more desirable than one with it. So once again we are left with the conclusion that either god does not exist or the evil world is what he wants.

“people who have (rightly) rejected a perversion of Christian teaching as illogical or immoral very often assume that they know very well what it is that Christians believe, and thus presume to dismiss a two-thousand-year-old tradition that has produced some of the world’s greatest art, music, philosophy and ethics, all on the basis of a caricature of Christianity that is not really held by any educated, thinking Christian.”.

Its fitting that you end your comment with an arguement that is an appeal to emotion logical fallacy. It is utterly irrelevant to the arguments I’ve made that christianity is a two thousand year old tradition or that you think it has produced some of the world’s greatest art, music, philosopy, and ethcis. The ethics that have come out of christianity in particular are shamefully arbitrary and bigoted in all too many instances.

It is the height of arrogance for you to
complain that anyone is making “a caricature of Christianity that is not really held by any educated, thinking Christian. The vast majority of christians have no in depth knowledge of christian theology, virtually no christian gives a damn about the word omnipotent, as used in the Nicene Creed, being a translation of the Greek word Pantocrator. What obsessed christians like you and Timothy think is largely irrelevant to this discussion as neither of you represent what the typical christian thinks and believes.

Your entire comment is just a longer version of Timothy’s appeal to authority logical fallacy, neither of you have specifically attempted to refute any argument I’ve made, you both think declaring yourselves experts on christianity and handwaving away the points I’ve raised is sufficient to refute me – it most certainly isn’t.

Just a few remarks:

According to orthodox Christian theology – and most fundamentalism decidedly does *not* fall into that category – God is not a god. He is not a Q or a super-powerful being. He is not one cause amongst many, even the first or most important. Rather, He is Being Itself, the reason there is something rather than nothing. That’s why we use a capital letter ‘G’ to refer to Him, to clarify that we are not speaking of mere entity like Zeus or Santa Claus.

Furthermore, to say that God is omnipotent does not mean to say that he can do anything. He cannot make a square triangle or a pointed circle. He cannot make white black or black white. He cannot make good evil or evil good. And He cannot act contrary to His nature. The word omnipotent, as used in the Nicene Creed, is a translation of the Greek word Pantocrator, which means literally the one who holds or rules over all things. The reference is to the scope of His power or authority, not to the theoretical range of possible actions He can take.

Finally, no Christian body except for the fundamentalist sects that seem so influential in the United States actually believes that God will condemn the vast majority of humanity for what amounts to a ‘thought crime’. I agree that that would certainly be unjust. Most Christian groups – including the Roman Catholic Church since Vatican II, the Orthodox Church, and many Protestant Churches – believe that God will judge people based on how they lived in response to what they received. Furthermore, many Christian Churches hold out the hope of universal salvation, that all will ultimately be reconciled to God and to each other. Such Churches tend to view Hell in rather more purgatorial terms.

The problem with most such discussions is that people who have (rightly) rejected a perversion of Christian teaching as illogical or immoral very often assume that they know very well what it is that Christians believe, and thus presume to dismiss a two-thousand-year-old tradition that has produced some of the world’s greatest art, music, philosophy and ethics, all on the basis of a caricature of Christianity that is not really held by any educated, thinking Christian.

Timothy, I’m well aware of what most christians believe about their god – you don’t speak for anyone other than yourself.

5) Priya Lynn’s definition of “just and loving” are different than that of the universe.
6) Priya Lynn has a misunderstanding of what Christians believe about their God
7) Christians have but a limited understanding of their own God
8) Shiva wonders just what the hell this debate is all about

Let’s remember, a debate about the existence of God which is based solely on the dogma of the most conservative of Christians is rather limited. It’s a bit like deciding whether packaged food tasted good, but only sampling spam.

It’s very very important to know exactly how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

If god is the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being that so many people believe him to be, or if he simply doesn’t exist. nothing would be any different than it is. As Matthew says, “Not a sparrow falls but the Lord god knows about it.”

And yet the sparrow still falls, and god’s presence or absence is simply not relevant. It simply doesn’t matter.

If god is simply an immensely powerful being, like Q in the old star trek series, then why should we consider him/it divine and holy, the fount of morality (now there’s a sarcasm), or the fount of truth? He is certianly no better than Q. And if he truly delights in creating a hell to send the vast majority of his puppets to, why is that worthy of worship?

And where is william shatner when we need him? He certainly hammed up his Jesus persona often enough in the old days. But if god is a being like Q, extremely powerful but basically an immoral child, why on earth would he incarnate himself and die a horrible death merely to appease his own bloodthirsty nature?

the contradictions abound in this kind of thinking, all of which lead me back to the first point.

It simply doesn’t matter.

However I would say that if god is neither omnipotent or omniscient, if he created the universe and all the people in it from nothing it seems hard to believe he could be that powerful, but not powerful enough to create people without the desire to do evil. Further, if he is powerful enough to create people without the desire to do evil, its rather obvious after all these millenia that a world where people have the power to do evil is a much worse world than one in which they do not, so he does not need to be omniscient to see his mistake and correct it – surely that should have been done long ago, so once again assuming a less than omniscient and omnipotent god its unlikely the world is anything other than the way he wants it to be.

I think you’re correct that one can posit scenarios without an omnipotent and omniscient god in which the world is not as he wants it to be and he has insufficient power to change it but I think even doing that would be quite a challenge if you accept that he had the power to create the universe and people in it from nothing and has at least the awareness of the state of the earth that the average person does.

Although I almost always refer to myself as an atheist, technically I’m agnostic in that I can’t 100% rule out the possibility of some sort of god. What I am 100% certain of though is that a god as decribed in christian theology cannot exist – a loving and just, all powerful and all knowing god that eternally tortures the vast majority of people that have ever lived primarily for the thought “crime” of not accepting Jesus as their lord. The punishment should fit the crime and eternal torture isn’t a fitting punishment even for someone like Hitler. Humans can only committ finite crimes and infinite punishment for anything any human has ever done is a gross miscarriage of justice.