The silence of God

[Sparhafoc]

but if you knock the door and your neighbor doesn't what to open the door, what should you do?

Oh look! More stupid distractions so LEROY doesn't feel obliged to actually address any substance. Lets add more WHAT IF's, cos that'll clarify everything, amirite?

But go on - for the lulz, and to watch you engage in yet more childish dismissals of logic.

What would I do?

Well, assuming I created their door, created their house, created them, created the world on which they live. I'd be a bit more insistent!

However, we're not talking about what I could do, but rather what your God should be able to do.

Are there doors barred to 'him' LEROY?

Is this another Iron Chariot, LEROY?

Are you claiming there are things God cannot do, LEROY?

Do feel free to respond to any of these before thinking that just because you replied you actually answered anything.

Because if you don't, regardless of what you think, you won't have actually defeated my argument.

form this thread
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=15387

it is obvious that you are not even interested in knowing if God/neighbor exists you are not even curios enough to look at your door and see if there is a neighbor out there

There is nothing 'obvious' there at all LEROY, just an expression of your typically vapid prejudice. It's an assertion, and it's an assertion about me and my nature, so it is consequently dismissed as yet more pathetic tomfoolery on your part. I am not so easily distracted - even you must have noticed that by now?

besides you are making the assumption that knocking doors is the best way to gain followers, if you are doing something else, and you are already gaining followers, what makes you think that knocking doors would be better?.......you have to prove it

Cite, LEROY

Where did I ever say anything ever about 'best way'.

I didn't.

Strawman.

Why can't you employ valid arguments, LEROY?

Plus, I already 'proved' it. Not that it is proof, because that's the wrong concept, rather I have presented a true and valid argument, and you have not been able to defeat it.

We can continue doing this as long as needed. You'll get bored long before I will!

 

[MarsCydonia]

but if you knock the door and your neighbor doesn't what to open the door, what should you do?

Oh look! More stupid distractions so LEROY doesn't feel obliged to actually address any substance. Lets add more WHAT IF's, cos that'll clarify everything, amirite?

But go on - for the lulz, and to watch you engage in yet more childish dismissals of logic.

What would I do?

Well, assuming I created their door, created their house, created them, created the world on which they live. I'd be a bit more insistent!

However, we're not talking about what I could do, but rather what your God should be able to do

Here is a good exemple why Leroy will not address the argument as it is correctly presented and must substitute his Leroy's Silence of God argument:
Because there is no "knocking on doors".

There are millions of unbelievers in the christian god that have no seen or heard evidence of its existence. This despite the fact that it is not beyond god's power to accomplish.

Hence why Leroy must ignore that there is no "knocking on doors" at all and "argue" that god will "knock" only if the doors that are currently opened will remain the same or increase.

Of course there are plenty of other issues with this approach to justify god's silence but it does give us a hint about why Leroy will not engage the argument.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Spot on!

It's the same tired old bullshit declared at non-believers that they will get the evidence for God if they just open their hearts!

Or 'harts' as LEROY so poetically put it. Given LEROY's other scriptural revision, maybe the self-styled Prophet has reinstituted blood sacrifices. And you can bet, if so, that he'd have a killer argument for it (read: 15 words incoherently strung together that don't withstand even a cursory glance repeated ad nauseum regardless of their repeated destruction).

So once again, even this supposed empirical observable effect God can create only happens if you already believe. And Hindus see Brahma too, LEROY. That either causes vast ramifications for your wibbly metaphysics, because it would be the same and only argument you could use and therefore validation of yours necessarily means validation of theirs, or that you are both delusional in a very specific way that religion has found to enact in our mammalian brains.

Not to remotely suggest that this is a fact (because we all know the kind of mendacity LEROY goes in for), but rather as an example of the kind of mechanical basis for the belief in gods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet

The God Helmet was not specifically designed to elicit visions of God,[1] but to test several of Persinger's hypotheses about brain function. The first of these is the Vectorial Hemisphericity Hypothesis,[15] which proposes that the human sense of self has two components, one on each side of the brain, that ordinarily work together but in which the left hemisphere is usually dominant.[16][17] Persinger argues that the two hemispheres make different contributions to a single sense of self, but under certain conditions can appear as two separate 'selves'. Persinger and Koren designed the God Helmet in an attempt to create conditions in which contributions to the sense of self from both cerebral hemispheres is disrupted.

For example, both Hindus and Christians (and all the other world religions who also sense the presence of their god) could have the same form of disruption between the hemispheres of their brains. Perhaps it's even the normal situation for human brains, perhaps those who don't are the odd ones out. Maybe only some religionists have this and it could have other effects like making them more passionate and convincing, so perhaps most other religionists simply go along with peer pressure and weight of cultural heritage. Either which way, if something like this is happening, then it would be rather similar to the point that has long been said: the evidence of the numerous human made gods exists only in your minds, not in the physical world - what you sense in there is just you, and that's why you're so absurdly confident it agrees with you!

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

he_who_is_nobody[/url]"]

leroy[/url]"]my final response to you and to everybody is>

Oh well...

You are the one claiming a deity has a goal. I am simply asking why you think that. What is up with this weird burden shift?

I am not the one who is claiming that God has a goal, Grumpy is the one who is making the assumption. I am just granting his assumption.

Once again, Grumpy Santa presented the argument from silence. You have added this secondary, the gain followers argument to that. Your argument is secondary to Grumpy Santa's.

The argument Grumpy Santa presented was the argument from the silence of a god.

yes and the argument presupposes that God has a goal,

Not the goal of gaining followers. This is why MarsCydonia keeps pointing out how you are running from the actual argument. Again, the reason I think you are running from it is because it already defeated you as I pointed out and you ignored.

he_who_is_nobody[/url]"]

leroy[/url]"]a loving relationship by definition is a two way street...

Tis hard to have a two way street if one is silent.

The Bible is the one claiming that God has a goal. If you want to challenge that, then you're not arguing for Christianity, are you?

He has not argued for Jesus since he was nailed about this already. Tis why he has to be vague and not mention the Bible.

leroy[/url]"]I am currently skeptical on the divinity of the bible, I personally don't consider my self to be 100% sure that the bible is true, and even if it where 100%, true I would be that my own personal interpretation is not 100% accurate.

 

[Sparhafoc]

You know.... I never read the OP, but assumed from comments throughout that it was written by someone called Grumpy Santa.

Then I looked at it, realized it was written by LEROY, realized it is nearly incomprehensible, and chock full of bullshit 'facts'.

For example:

But I can do better than just shifting the burden proof.........we know that at 99% of the worlds population believes in some kind of God so whatever God is doing, he is doing a good job.

Better than shifting the burden of proof by making a bare-arsed assertion?

We know no such thing.

Secondly, utterly fucking idiotic. Most theists in the world don't believe in your God, so clearly the other gods are doing just as well. Those other gods which you believe in, right?

What moronic bollocks you write, LEROY.

 

[leroy]

this is a complete refutation of the argument originally presented by grumpy

this article more less represents my position
https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/where-is-god-the-problem-of-divine-hiddenness/5270/

 

[leroy]

Once again, Grumpy Santa presented the argument from silence. You have added this secondary, the gain followers argument to that. Your argument is secondary to Grumpy Santa's.

Grupys argument presupposes that Gods goal is to gain more believers, I didn't grant that to be the goal and suggested that the goal might be gaining followers and not just believers.



But we can take your contributions and claim that we don't know what Gods goals are.


by accepting your contribution, It would still be true that we cant know that by knocking doors god would achieve his goals more efficiently.

 

[MarsCydonia]

Grupys argument presupposes that Gods goal is to gain more believers, I didn't grant that to be the goal and suggested that the goal might be gaining followers and not just believers.

I think everyone agree here: Since Leroy had no valid objections to the correct form of the argument, he had to present objections to his strawman Leroy's "Silence of God" argument.

Unfortunately for Leroy, his objections to his strawman Leroy's "Silence of God" argument were also shown to be valid and Leroy did the only thing he can do in such situations: he ran from addressing this.

But we can take your contributions and claim that we don't know what Gods goals are.

by accepting your contribution, It would still be true that we cant know that by knocking doors god would achieve his goals more efficiently.

Then if we discuss a god whose goals are unknown, we are addressing a different god than the one proposed by christianity.

Thus, we're back to something we all previously agreed: the correct form of the argument or the strawman Leroy's "Silence of God" argument are not arguments against a hidden god that does not want "believers or followers".

But when discussing the god proposed by christianity? The arguments still apply and Leroy has yet to come up with any valid objections.

17 pages of comments and we've the pleasure of observing Leroy's constant running away from addressing:
1. The correct form of the argument.
2. How his objections to his strawman form of the argument (where he pretended to know god's goals) were shown to be invalid.
3. How his strawman form of the argument and his now reversal of "not knowing god goals' brings glaring issues for a christian standpoint.

Pages of comments ago we were told there would be a "final" Leroy comment but we have not had yet one response from Leroy, "final" or otherwise, that addresses this.

 

[MarsCydonia]

this is a complete refutation of the argument originally presented by grumpy

this article more less represents my position
https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/where-is-god-the-problem-of-divine-hiddenness/5270/

Invalid objections written by someone else are still invalid objections.

Was Leroy under the impression that the author of this blog piece wrote something new and never addressed before?

 

[Sparhafoc]

Grupys argument presupposes that Gods goal is to gain more believers, I didn't grant that to be the goal and suggested that the goal might be gaining followers and not just believers.

Doesn't matter if you grant it, LEROY,.

The Bible says it.

So again, unless you are claiming to be a new Prophet - someone divinely inspired to interpret the word or will of God - then you are genetically undermining any credibility you may have in terms of the basis for your argumentation.

Either you use the Bible - the only form of support for your claims - and you restrict yourself to it. Or you make up any old guff and pretend that it's Christianity.

Either which way, no one is obliged to accept anything you say just because you said it.

What makes people here accept an argument is the merit of that argument.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

he_who_is_nobody[/url]"]

leroy[/url]"]my final response to you and to everybody is>

Oh well...

Once again, Grumpy Santa presented the argument from silence. You have added this secondary, the gain followers argument to that. Your argument is secondary to Grumpy Santa's.

Grupys argument presupposes that Gods goal is to gain more believers, I didn't grant that to be the goal and suggested that the goal might be gaining followers and not just believers.

Glad to see you admit that you are not addressing the correct form of the argument and instead argued against a strawman from the start.

But we can take your contributions and claim that we don't know what Gods goals are.


by accepting your contribution, It would still be true that we cant know that by knocking doors god would achieve his goals more efficiently.

If a deity knocked on everyone's door, it would no longer be silent and everyone would know of it, thus defeating the arguement. A deity's goal(s) is irrelevant after that according to Grumpy Santa's argument. Are you really this dense? You made this thread and labeled it "the silence of God". This is just sad.

 

[leroy]

[If a deity knocked on everyone's door, it would no longer be silent and everyone would know of it, thus defeating the arguement. A deity's goal(s) is irrelevant after that according to Grumpy Santa's argument. Are you really this dense? You made this thread and labeled it "the silence of God". This is just sad.

my counterargument is not and has never been that God could have not been less silent, the counterargument is that you can not prove that by being less silent God would achieve his goals more efficiently.


but don't worry, no one is expecting you to understand it, we all know that you will respond with some other stupid straw man or some irrelevant comment

 

[MarsCydonia]

my counterargument is not and has never been that God could have not been less silent, the counterargument is that you can not prove that by being less silent God would achieve his goals more efficiently.

but don't worry, no one is expecting you to understand it, we all know that you will respond with some other stupid straw man or some irrelevant comment

Of course, "pointing out that if we're talking about a god without unknown goals (goals that do not include having believers or followers), we're no longer talking about the god of christianity" but another god completely irrelevant to Leroy's "Silence of God" argument" would count as a irrelevant comment...

Everything for Leroy to un away and avoid the actual argument... 17 pages of running away so far.

 

[thenexttodie]

[

Yes. Atheists seem to be and have always been an insignificant number of the worlds population. The fact that people believe in God is evident in force and can be proven as a major motivational factor, throughout history. The same cannot be said for atheism. I see no reason why I should not consider the possibility that you and all other atheists are liars.

1) And, as with any human characteristic, there are norms and outliers; normative distributions. An example of this is intelligence. The majority of people have an average intelligence (obviously) and a smaller subsection of humanity have higher (and in some cases dramatically higher) intelligence than the norm. So explain to me why it's a problem that there are few intelligent people historically, and there are few atheists historically.

Dang it! You figured out a way to magically test the intelligence of dead people!! This proves I am wrong!

Do you think any of the historical burning, torturing, mutilation, and other heinous barbarism committed by the Church or other state sanctioned religions have anything to do with the apparent historical absence of vocal atheists? Could it be that they either got tortured to death, or were too afraid of being murdered for their 'crimes' of not believing?

I doubt there was ever a significant amount of atheists who lived during..well.....whenever it was you are talking about.

Incidentally, think before you answer because, as I hope you are beginning to expect, I have an awful lot of relevant data to hand here. For example, you don't know about historical atheism, and so you pretend it doesn't exist. Whereas, I have dozens, maybe hundreds of texts from throughout human early history to classical times showing a long, widely spread rejection of belief in gods. Another example would be that 2 Hindu schools are expressly atheistic, and those schools predate Christianity, or even written Judaism.


2) Most people do not believe in God, capital G. Most people throughout history were animists. That is, they believe that spirits inhabit mundane objects like rocks, trees, and rivers. Therefore paganism is true? It is a vastly more 'motivational' component of human history than your Yahweh chap.

Sorry. I did not realize that Atheists believe spirits live in rocks and rivers. Does HackenSlash believe this too?

Incidentally, there's another contradiction for you, the flip side to your claim: Most people in the history of the planet did not believe in your god, so your belief must be wrong according to the appeal to popularity, right?

Well God in the Bible seems to actually point out the fact that most people will reject Him. God said he made the sun and that we should not worship it. But of course, people still did. Probably some still do even today. God acknowledges the fact that people will worship the creation rather then the creator.

 

[thenexttodie]

Of course, "pointing out that if we're talking about a god without unknown goals (goals that do not include having believers or followers), we're no longer talking about the god of christianity"

MarsCydonia is one of the many experts on this forum.

 

[MarsCydonia]

MarsCydonia is one of the many experts on this forum.

I wouldn't say I'm an expert on christian trolls but you and Leroy certainly provide plenty of experience.

 

[thenexttodie]

Well God in the Bible seems to actually point out the fact that most people will reject Him. God said he made the sun and that we should not worship it. But of course, people still did. Probably some still do even today. God acknowledges the fact that people will worship the creation rather then the creator.

Have made mistake here? We better ask MarsCydonia to evaluate this statement. He is an expert.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

[If a deity knocked on everyone's door, it would no longer be silent and everyone would know of it, thus defeating the arguement. A deity's goal(s) is irrelevant after that according to Grumpy Santa's argument. Are you really this dense? You made this thread and labeled it "the silence of God". This is just sad.

my counterargument is not and has never been that God could have not been less silent, the counterargument is that you can not prove that by being less silent God would achieve his goals more efficiently.

Yes dandan/leroy, you already admitted to creating a strawman and arguing against that instead of the real argument. Now, perhaps you can address the actual argument.

but don't worry, no one is expecting you to understand it, we all know that you will respond with some other stupid straw man or some irrelevant comment

:lol:

Says the guy that as admitted twice now to not addressing the real argument and creating a strawman to argue against.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Dang it! You figured out a way to magically test the intelligence of dead people!! This proves I am wrong!

Say what now?

Where did I suggest anything of the sort? :roll:

Please respond to what I actually wrote rather than what you might prefer that I had wrote.

I doubt there was ever a significant amount of atheists who lived during..well.....whenever it was you are talking about.

Funny how you haven't asked for the evidence contradicting your naive belief. Would you prefer just to be right due to relevant knowledge, or would you prefer to be accurate with respect to what's known?

Incidentally, think before you answer because, as I hope you are beginning to expect, I have an awful lot of relevant data to hand here. For example, you don't know about historical atheism, and so you pretend it doesn't exist. Whereas, I have dozens, maybe hundreds of texts from throughout human early history to classical times showing a long, widely spread rejection of belief in gods. Another example would be that 2 Hindu schools are expressly atheistic, and those schools predate Christianity, or even written Judaism.

2) Most people do not believe in God, capital G. Most people throughout history were animists. That is, they believe that spirits inhabit mundane objects like rocks, trees, and rivers. Therefore paganism is true? It is a vastly more 'motivational' component of human history than your Yahweh chap.

Sorry. I did not realize that Atheists believe spirits live in rocks and rivers. Does HackenSlash believe this too?

Not only did you not realize it, you also just made it up. No suggestion of your non-sequitur in the text you are supposedly replying to. Again, do feel free to address what I write, rather than try to make my arguments for me so you can knock them down.

Clearly, I wasn't claiming that animists are atheists (although they can be, they're not mutually contradictory), but rather defeating your previous bullshit appeal to popularity that most people are theists, or that most believed in your preferred god. This is just ignorance on your part, and I offered you knowledge.

Have you been taking dance lessons from LEROY?

Regardless, anyone reading the above can see that I made two points. The latter we already discussed as it shows your claim was wrong because it would result in animism being justified, not Yahwehism, the former provides another line of evidence contradicting your claim through the numerous recorded schools of atheistic thought in the ancient world.

Flap on, chap!

Well God in the Bible seems to actually point out the fact that most people will reject Him. God said he made the sun and that we should not worship it. But of course, people still did. Probably some still do even today. God acknowledges the fact that people will worship the creation rather then the creator.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

And you respond with apologetic vapidities. Religion makes bots out of you.

What actually occurs in the Bible is that Yahweh acknowledges the existence of other gods, but admits to being jealous of 'his' adherents' affections.

In reality, there were people for tens of thousands of years before any idea of YHWH was posited. Going to show me how you know they weren't atheists? Doesn't matter, because just the fact that they didn't believe in your preferred god undermines all the claims you've made above.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

Although this might be a case of splitting hairs...

Anyone who doesn't believe in the Christian God is an atheist - at least with regards to the Christian God.

Followers of any other religion are, thus, "atheists" as to the Christian God, just as much as an actual atheist (without belief in any god).

So, most people who've ever lived were/are atheists.

Kindest regards,

James