Why ought I follow?

[thenexttodie]

Yet the original question was "Why ought I follow" ..we're still waiting for an answer.

Btw your original question was stupid. You want us to explain to you why you should follow a god you are pretending to believe in?? It doesn't really make any sense.

 

[Sparhafoc]

I never said I thought God can not do evil. What I said was I believe God is good of his own freewill. Thus He could choose to do evil.

Point of order: that's not what you said at all.

What you said, quite expressly, is that God couldn't do evil because the other bits that are also God wouldn't let him, allow him, be possible for him. Which I boiled down to God is good because God says God is good.

Now, you didn't ask me to unpack it because you agreed it was circular reasoning. However, it is exactly your reasoning.

You used the notion of a 'reference point' - as in, the other 'two' components of God are a reference point that would stop God being able to do evil.

That, then, would be a self-referential point. God, in an alternative form to... what? to God? God, in another aspect of himself would stop himself in his non-aspect from being able to do evil. He is his own reference point that would provide an anchor to weather the tribulations of the potential for evil.

So, albeit formed in an intentionally clunky way: God is good because God says God is good. As God is the only reference, anything God says is good is good by default. So if 'he' flays a baby alive, keeping it alive to maximize its pain, then refers to 'himself' in another aspect to check whether this is morally acceptable, then you are proposing that God, in another aspect, could then turn round to 'himself' in his original aspect and disagree with 'himself' by providing reasons, evidence, or some form of argument that God.... did not already know?

Seriously, we need a scratchy head smiley here because you don't seem to get that you are engaging in the most blatant example of circular reasoning. Yes, yes, I know you didn't say it the way I said it, but I am following what you are saying, accepting it as a postulate, to test whether it can be valid. Not true, mind. Just valid. If valid, then it must have ramifications as per my extended reductio ad absurdum.

From my perspective, this is what happened:

You wrote a circular argument about God being blocked, or whatever word you want to use, from being evil.
I pointed out that the argument was circular by doing as I've written above.
You agreed that my rendition was circular.
I pointed out that it was your argument re-rendered and that you need to explain why your rendition wasn't circular when mine was an extension of yours.
You replied with the same argument you made which started the thread of exchange.

That's kind of a meta circular argument in which a circular argument is contained! Circular argument squared! The Russian Doll Circular Argument?
I think you might have broken logic for ever more!

Yes, even accepting all your postulates, horrible and illogical contradictions ensue. If your argument is true, then your Christian god does not exist. I am not sure exactly what god it would then be, but it surely doesn't possess the attributes you are scripturally obligated to define it with.


Incidentally, I have forwarded this argument in the past with respect to God not being a moral agent - being logically incapable of being a moral agent - at least up until the moment 'he' created other agents (assuming all the bullshit of the singularity of Yahweh is given free philosophical pass). Morality requires an external arbiter. If all humanity died tonight while you slept, when you woke up tomorrow, morality would not exist. Splutter for a bit - it's what Christian fundies think boogeymen skeptics secretly believe in their cold nihilistic hearts, and I've just said it! Only, I didn't say 'in the absence of the Christian God', which I take as a firmly established axiom, I said in the absence of other moral agents. The last Christian fundamentalist standing would feel obligated, morally, to go to church, to pay for any goods he takes, to perform actions that no longer have any significance to reality. All the other component pieces of morality are gone, and therefore so is morality.

This reflects on that time before time when Yahweh was just thought, and all was formless and potential. How can 'he' be the font of morality when there's no scope of actions within which to be moral? The only way one could shore up all this and still retain belief in Yahweh would be to acknowledge that Yahweh was amoral until humans existed, then apparently learned (by murdering them all with a Flud!) about moral actions and conscience and the like, and eventually grew an entire ethical code that has some semblance of non-tribalistic fappery thousands of years later.

The problem then, dear sir, is that you have then found yourself in a situation where an amoral God created the universe, and when 'he' made humans, found them lacking, and punished them... 'he' was still unaware of morality. When 'he' crafted hell, when 'he' introduced death, pain in childbirth, disease and even death... these were the actions of a being without any morality, without any coherent sense of morality. We, then, would be 'his' guinea pigs in a cosmic game of him learning how not to squish the ants.

Doesn't paint a nice picture of your subject of devotion.

But anyway, let's go for the jugular. Sorry in advance, this won't be pretty but it was the argument I had from the beginning.

Then you asked how I know God has never done evil before. My answer was that if He did evil, I don't think there would still be a trinity. I am not sure why you are stuck on this, you seem like a smart guy.

Oh I am not stuck on it, good sir. I can see very clearly that it is a non-sequitur, and even when given all the possible benefits of doubt, casting aside all the thorny complex issues such things as the trinity raises, even when accepting everything you say as a working postulate... we still have a scenario where (and this is the actual order of posts) you have deductively removed any reason to lend credence to the Christian god hypothesis. To wit:

I started with:

My question for you is can god be bad?

You came back with:

It seems to me God exists in a Trinity; God, God the son, and the Holy Spirit. God is God and God the son is Jesus who for sometime existed as a man and also existed before he was a man.... The trinity is held together because any 2 parts can testify that the 3rd part is good.

I then summarized that as:

God is good because God says God is good.

You slightly evaded by saying that God could potentially do evil...

Yes, I think that God has the freewill to chose to do evil.

So I pushed a bit harder to get you to address what is still not answered in any logical way, and you offered:

It seems to me God, exists with 2 other counterparts which provide a "reference point" so to speak which allow God to know that he is good.

Which, if you look at the first rendition I gave you, highlighted above in yellow, is exactly what I said to you and to which you agreed was circular reasoning.

God is 'his' own reference point, if God says it is good, then it is good because God can both ask and answer that question. It's unquestionably circular. Circular reasoning can't be valid or true because both component pieces rely on each other to give validity. Take either away, and it falls apart.

Sadly, that's precisely what's lurking behind your non-sequitur argument; and again, I know as I was heavily involved in the Christian tradition.

All you need to do is say the magic words LEROY, the eternally unthinking, uttered in this very thread.

God is good.

That's actually the sum of the 'argument' stripped down. Either God is good, or god does not exist.

As far as I am concerned, you have just proven in the deductive sense that God, the Christian capitalized one otherwise known as Yahweh, does not exist because it is a paradox.

/drops mic and heads for the exit, sunrise blossoming on the verdant hills

/noise of record scratching...

I had assumed your next question would be: How do I know God still exists in a Trinity? ..../i]

Feels a bit like a post-coital blow job now, but go on.... I don't want to be rude to you, I have no disrespect for you as a human being, it's just your beliefs that are bad bullshit and that is why I destroy them. If it makes you appreciate I have some degree of humanity, then know that I had to destroy them in myself first, and thus I can understand the emotional and psychological entanglement in such ideas. Fortunately, I have always worked in fields where the motto is 'kill your darlings' where bad ideas get beaten into the ground with a stick just for the lulz, then spat on for wasting our time. Where no matter how treasured an idea is, if it doesn't work, or isn't evident, then tough titties to you, it's on the floor getting sticked for lulz. For me, I value this process more than anything else.

But to stop this floppy foreplay and answer your question...

No, of course I wouldn't need to ask you how you know God does anything. I know that you don't know; there are very few things I would be able to muster more confidence in that that certainty. I know why you think you know. I know the scripture, I know the traditional dogma various Christian groups employ, so I know how you know you know you know you know, and that you don't really know, and the falsehood only exists today and in your mind because everyone keeps assuring each other that they know, they really, really do. Actually, none of you - none of us, humans altogether ever - have ever known, and the sooner we all get to that realization, the longer our prospects as a species.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Yet the original question was "Why ought I follow" ..we're still waiting for an answer.

Btw your original question was stupid. You want us to explain to you why you should follow a god you are pretending to believe in?? It doesn't really make any sense.

Again, it's a postulate.

One doesn't really need to lend any belief - it's not a required component to accept a working postulate.

Instead, as is often cited, the supposedly Aristotelian notion that...

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

To put it another way, here's an example: Imagine a subatomic species whose thoughts vibrate the subdimensional strings effecting our universe. How would they eat? How would they transform one type of energy state into another? See how you don't need to accept the postulate, but that accepting it leads to an argument contradicting it, thereby testing the validity of the postulate?

As such, while Mars doesn't actually lend any credence to the god's existence element of the postulate, Mars will happily simply let that go in order to test the ramifications of your argument based on that postulate.

This is why I am all for pedantry, and why I spent several dozen words explaining why I don't accept the postulate raised in a similar stalking horse thread by LEROY. It might be annoying to read me ramble on about my reasons for thinking something, but it does make it hard for an honest reader to misrepresent what I meant. That's really not pointed at you, btw TNTD - rather.... *glares condescendingly at LEROY*

So yeah, I don't believe in Yahweh because there's no evidence and all the many things I've heard about Yahweh make it an illogical, internally contradictory, clearly man-made fiction. I genuinely believe Christianity and other fundamentalist religions are akin to a disability, to a health issue that can be cured. To me, the means of cure is reason, evidence, and logic. So, if I want to ask about what Yahweh thinks or believes, I wouldn't thereby be joining you in lending credence to the purported being's existence, instead I'd be using your reply to address the problem logically, and show the flaws, or outright errors in the thinking underlying Christianity. Obviously, I don't believe there is any evidence for God or gods, so the only way I can accept that humans could know about them is if they'd reasoned their way into discovering them as a logical necessity, thus the 'only chance' a religionist has to convince me of the utility of the god hypothesis is by providing coherent, logical, and undefeatable arguments.

I doubt it would surprise you to know that I personally don't think I've ever encountered any even barely coherent argument that necessitates a Yahweh hypothesis.

 

[Sparhafoc]

[
Maybe you would like to tell us all now what your point is?

It's quite simple: James is showing you another way in which the ontologies ascribed to the Christian god - the actual working postulates - necessarily result in internal contradiction, therefore paradox, therefore self-defeating.

It's basically what you did unwittingly, but James' was pithier!

 

[MarsCydonia]

Your right Mars, I am asking you the same question you asked earlier. Are people not allowed to do this?

Of course you can. You can avoid answering the question all you want and you can do it in the christian-trollish way you do. It justs show how much you actually "thought" about how "good" god is and why we ought follow.

We can assume the answer to how much you "thought" about it to be the same as the answer you provided about it: again "fuck" and "all".

btw your original question was stupid. You want us to explain to you why you should follow a god you are pretending to believe in?? It doesn't really make any sense.

What? Your description of my question makes no sense.

I didn't expect a good answer from the christians. I also did not expect no answer at all to the question at 4 pages in.

 

[thenexttodie]

I never said I thought God can not do evil. What I said was I believe God is good of his own freewill. Thus He could choose to do evil.

Point of order: that's not what you said at all.

lol I said God has the freewill to choose to do evil. You even quoted me saying this. Go back and read page 2.

What you said, quite expressly, is that God couldn't do evil because the other bits that are also God wouldn't let him, allow him, be possible for him. Which I boiled down to God is good because God says God is good.

I think you misunderstood what I was talking about. Which is understandable. But you implied that you heard it all before in the writings of Thomas Aquinas and even gave a brief history of my position, and told me that it dates back to the 3rd century or something like that. I tried to tell you that I only read a small part of what Aquinas wrote, a long time ago, and did not consider it significant enough to remember it or ever read again.

Yet you insisted. And now it's obvious to me that you never really understood what it was I was trying to explain to you about what I believe. Now you have wasted all this time writing this post, probably all of it addressing an argument I never made all because you seem more interested in trying to catch me in some verbal trap(as if I don't know what my own beliefs are, or would somehow forget them after a day or 2) than you are in actually considering what I wrote here and engaging in a written dialog.

I am being completely honest with you about my beliefs as a Christian. I am not really trying to fight about it with you.

 

[thenexttodie]

Your right Mars, I am asking you the same question you asked earlier. Are people not allowed to do this?

[/quote]

Of course you can. You can avoid answering the question all you want

I tried to answer it. I guess I failed. You win.

Do you have an answer as to how it is you know something is good?

 

[MarsCydonia]

I tried to answer it. I guess I failed. You win.

Do you have an answer as to how it is you know something is good?

Are we in agreement then that you have no answer for this topic? That there is no reason why somone ought follow god?

 

[thenexttodie]

I tried to answer it. I guess I failed. You win.

Do you have an answer as to how it is you know something is good?

Are we in agreement then that you have no answer for this topic? That there is no reason why somone ought follow god?

If God exists, then He would have a better ability to gather and correctly interpret data than you do. I think this would be a reason to follow him. What do you think?

 

[thenexttodie]

BTW How do you know something is good? You seemed to imply earlier that, to you, something is good if it reduces human suffering.

 

[MarsCydonia]

If God exists, then He would have a better ability to gather and correctly interpret data than you do. I think this would be a reason to follow him. What do you think?

And...? You think this "reason to follow him" why? The number of people that have a better ability to gather and correctly interpret data than you do are probably in the millions. Do you follow all of them?

How does that, even if we grant this unsupported assumption, lead us to "we ought follow"?

Do you have an answer as to how it is you know something is good? You seemed to imply earlier that, to you, something is good if it reduces human suffering.

- What was it about my answer that you did not get? Should I copy the answer here?
- And since, you have yet to back your assertion that god is good and are now asking what good is, are we in agreement then that you have no idea of your own about what good is?


And so since you've provided nothing but a non-answer, again, I'll ask, again:
Are we in agreement then that you have no answer for this topic? That there is no reason why somone ought follow god?[/quote]

Is trolling the best that the christians hanging here can come up with? What will be your next non-answer?

 

[thenexttodie]

And...? You think this "reason to follow him" why? The number of people that have a better ability to gather and correctly interpret data than you do are probably in the millions. Do you follow all of them?

You should get some sleep.

 

[MarsCydonia]

You should get some sleep.

You should get some balls.

 

[Sparhafoc]

lol I said God has the freewill to choose to do evil. You even quoted me saying this. Go back and read page 2.

Look, sir, you may well have obfuscated yourself with the ideological prattle you've uncritically swallowed, but it didn't confuse me.

You can tell that by how I already quoted you saying exactly what I said.

You claimed that God cannot do evil because God (in other avatars) would stop God from doing evil.

So you are, factually, saying that God cannot do evil, even if you contradict yourself.

From my perspective (and from anyone interested in discovering truth by employing logic) then any position which contradicts itself must have a biiiiiig fucking problem within it.

The problem is that which I've identified for you and spelled out clearly.

So rather than say you didn't say X just because you used different words, what's really occurring here is that you are evading addressing all the substance of my argument.

That's fine. I don't need to show you, or to have you accept logic, but it will be clear for anyone else reading this that your claims were dismantled and you couldn't recognize it.

I think you misunderstood what I was talking about. Which is understandable. But you implied that you heard it all before in the writings of Thomas Aquinas and even gave a brief history of my position, and told me that it dates back to the 3rd century or something like that. I tried to tell you that I only read a small part of what Aquinas wrote, a long time ago, and did not consider it significant enough to remember it or ever read again.

Yet you insisted. And now it's obvious to me that you never really understood what it was I was trying to explain to you about what I believe. Now you have wasted all this time writing this post, probably all of it addressing an argument I never made all because you seem more interested in trying to catch me in some verbal trap(as if I don't know what my own beliefs are, or would somehow forget them after a day or 2) than you are in actually considering what I wrote here and engaging in a written dialog.

I am being completely honest with you about my beliefs as a Christian. I am not really trying to fight about it with you.

Nice try, but this is all a red herring.

I addressed very clearly what you said, showed why it was flawed, then inspected the ramifications of this error and how it deductively shows that Yahweh does not exist.

So you've 'retorted' with a story about how you're just a great guy etc. etc.

I never said you weren't - I wouldn't bother speaking to you directly if I thought you were a tit.

However, by writing all the above and failing to address the content of my post, it shows that cognitive bias is at play. You can't process it because it would undermine the belief you most value. So your subconscious has set about distracting you.

Don't, for a moment, believe that your cognitive bias is distracting me, though.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Do you have an answer as to how it is you know something is good?

We can kick footballs into goals with moving posts all day.

 

[Sparhafoc]

If God exists, then He would have a better ability to gather and correctly interpret data than you do. I think this would be a reason to follow him. What do you think?

Internally contradictory ontology.

The Christian God would have no need to gather or interpret data because one of the god's primary characteristics is that 'he' is omniscient. No gathering or interpreting needed for omniscience.

Here's the issue TNTD (can you just tell me your name, so I don't need to keep writing silly letters? Mine's Gary, pleased to meet you).

A primary element of sense, knowledge, information, coherence, of having anything worth saying ever about anything is the Law of Non-Contradiction.

If you propose something that contradicts itself, then you are wrong at a most elementary level. That's when you should go 'oh wait' and start inspecting the thought processes that lead you to assert a contradiction.

Instead, you've now produced a series of contradictions and you won't inspect them.

I am not being poe-faced here... I mean this quite literally.... this is precisely how bullshit ideas persist - because the possessors of those ideas either lack the ability or the impetus to inspect them.

You've had them inspected for you here, all the hard work is done, but all that seems to mean is that you use the energy you saved by not independently thinking, to contrive distractions for yourself to not process the necessary implications.

Again, no offense meant at all. This doesn't make you less of a human being, doesn't make you a bad person, it just explains why you are religious.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

If god is capable of doing evil then he can't be omni-benevolent (all good).

It's that simple.

Maybe you would like to tell us all now what your point is?

As Sparhafoc - aka, Gary /waves - said, you're contradicting yourself: if god can do evil he can't be all-good.

In other words, your concept of god is incoherent - as Gary pointed out himself, and helped clarify that I'd done so as well.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[thenexttodie]

As Sparhafoc - aka, Gary /waves - said, you're contradicting yourself: if god can do evil he can't be all-good.

Strawman.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

As Sparhafoc - aka, Gary /waves - said, you're contradicting yourself: if god can do evil he can't be all-good.

Strawman.

How can my pointing out a inherent contradiction in your concept of your deity be a strawman argument?

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Sparhafoc]

As Sparhafoc - aka, Gary /waves - said, you're contradicting yourself: if god can do evil he can't be all-good.

Strawman.

/scratchy head emoticon

What exactly are you saying is a strawman there?

Are you saying James strawmanned me?

Are you saying James strawmanned you?

Are you saying James strawmanned the purported ontology of Yahweh?

It's not clear because it's just one word. Maybe add a few more?