Easiest philosophical proof against the "all powerful god of major religion's"?

Discussion in 'Agnosticism and Atheism' started by ChangeHappens, Aug 10, 2011.

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  1. liberaljoe619

    liberaljoe619 Guest

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    that is the problem with religion and society people are just media brianwashed and religion brainwash
     
  2. liberaljoe619

    liberaljoe619 Guest

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    until one respects other religions than their is no peace
     
  3. ChangeHappens

    ChangeHappens Member

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    "God judgeth the righteous, and GOD is angry with the wicked every day." (Psalm 7:11, KJV)

    Anger is a desire to change a situation to one's liking, due to a dissatisfaction of it being so. We don't feel angry because we like how a situation is unfolding, rather we have preferences/desires for it to unfold in a specific way.

    You can't possibly argue against this unless you somehow show that god being angry is no different to god being pleased.

    If that is the case there is no difference in doing good or wicked things because gods opinion remains unchanged.

    But since you can easily read how god does get angry, you either are employing a different definition of god or your critical thinking skills require sharpening.

    I do thin you are taking a different definition of god.

    Remember or re-read my post, because I clearly say that I am arguing against the god of religious texts.
     
  4. ChangeHappens

    ChangeHappens Member

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    Easiest philosophical proof against the "all powerful god of major religion's"?

    Or maybe you just don't pay attention to my post's direction???

    Did you not see I am specifically talking about the concept of god in the major religions???

    :rolleyes:
     
  5. Soooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrr-----yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
     
  6. ChangeHappens

    ChangeHappens Member

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    :computer:

    :rockon:

    I understand, the mind tends to pick up on patterns when reading and not on specifics.

    Thats the nature of teh' Internetz!

    Thank 'god' that you didn't insult me for being ignorant, otherwise I would have turned this shit into a flame fest.

    Anger Management is still something I am working on.
     
  7. 'Tis difficult to control that little mad beast.
     
  8. Serena03

    Serena03 Member

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    God merely appears as an answer or a conjecture without any means of justification. It is a suffocation to the mind and predominant of the soul, bringing death to imagination and exploration.

    That is the power of the mind though, it can create something so abstruse that even it cannot comprehend. A concept which was once our own subordination has now become our most overpowering, overbearing and undying creation. May it live to see us die.
     
  9. jamgrassphan

    jamgrassphan Get up offa that thing Lifetime Supporter

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    The subject of your OP was "all powerful god of major religion's"
    And here you say the god of religious texts? And then you've narrowed it down quite a bit further to the Christian god, quoting from KJV of the Christian Bible. How can you accuse me of employing a different definition of god, when you haven't settled upon a clear definition of god in the first place. But for the sake of argument, let's talk about God's motivation in the KJV with regard to your premise:

    1. All conscious beings that have desires, drives, and wants, are lacking of some form of experience which their drives, desires and wants derive them self from. Take the desire for sex, food or sleep - the primary reason any conscious being moves in a direction towards them is because they do not yet have them. For example, a person having sex, no longer has a need, want, or desire to have sex because they have arrived at a point where the need has or is being met.

    The KJV of the bible never touches upon any desires, drives, and wants of God, beyond what God wants of its creation. Indeed, the Christian God seems to be a conscious being with an unfulfilled desire - he wants mankind to follow his laws - a desire the Christian God also created. An artifice? Yes. But an undeniable one, if we're talking about the God depicted in the Christian bible. I'm not sure I'm buying into your use of "experience" here. How can apply the concept of "experience" to something that is described as an omnipotent being.

    2. All conscious beings that have intention, all have desires, drives and wants which the intention facilitates their satisfaction of.

    The Christian God wants his creation to follow his laws - that is this god's intention.

    3. All powerful being's, are by definition, never capable of lacking anything because all powerful beings have the power to be 100% satisfied at all times. If they do lack anything it is their own fault, because they have the power over any other power which is limited to achieve what they lack in their experience.

    The Christian God is portrayed as being all powerful and has the capability of being 100% satisfied. But chooses, for whatever reason, to allow men Free Will. The very will to disobey him. The reason for this is irrelevent and beyond the scope of your premise, so I won't go into it. You say "their own fault", but why couldn't this also be "their own intention". "Fault" implies imperfection and how could we imply that about an all powerful being.

    4. In order to create something one must first have a drive, desire and want to do so, otherwise such a creation occurs by chance which is not what intelligent design presumes and thus not what a 'god' does.

    This is where your premise falls short. The Christian God's motivation for creation is never questioned or explored in the text. It simply is - which is no less or no more mysterious than the notion of a spontaneously "chance" creation of the universe. Intelligent design presumes nothing about the motives behind the Christian God's (or any God's for that matter) decision to create the universe. The scope of Intelligent design is only concerned with the actual creation, and the results thereof.

    Conclusion

    1. If god is all powerful, then he could never have any drive, want or desire, for in order to have these thing's one must be lacking of some sort of experience.

    What sort of experience is an artist lacking when he/she is inspired to create a work of art? Is it possible that a conscious being creates something for no other reason than it can? As a conscious being, I feel confident in saying that yes, it is possible.

    Is it reasonable for the Christian God to be angry when his creation disobeys his will, considering that the Christian God has created free will and given it to his creation and considering that the Christian God who is described as being all powerful could easily remedy that? Whose to say? If the Christian god (or any god) is said to have created the universe, I think it's safe to say that said god can create it's own "desire" without the need for the inverse "lacking of experience" - or lacking anything for that matter. The moment you start pondering the implications of an omnipotent being - the laws of the universe and the reasoning of men simply do not apply. Science and Logic will never be able to prove or disprove the existence of "God". Belief and disbelief require the same leap of faith. You put your faith in Science, Reason and Logic, or you put your faith in Mystical Beliefs, or all of the above and learn to accept cognitive dissonance.
     
  10. I always thought just the opposite; that people were trying to suffocate my imagination by telling me that such a concept is impossible and not worth exploring. I can imagine it being true, though.
     
  11. Serena03

    Serena03 Member

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    I am sorry, but my mind has never felt very liberated when it is limited to just one ultimate answer for everything. Imagination as well is limited to innovation when the flying colors of possibilities are withheld by an 'all knowing' barrier at the end of the rainbow. I do like elucidations, but at the same time I like to wonder.
     
  12. gunison

    gunison Member

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    I think there are two closely related objections that the theist could make to this argument against God's existence (I, myself, am an atheist, by the way).

    First, if there is a God, then in addition to being omnipotent, omnipresent and so on, He is also eternal. You could define eternal a couple of different ways. One definition is that God exists "outside time" or is in some way extra-temporal. That sounds cool, but it's pretty vague. A better definition is that there is no time when God didn't exist.

    Given that God is eternal, all this talk about desires and intentions and so forth isn't applicable to God. Whatever else God is up to, He's not operating in/within time the same way you and I are. Just like I'm not the sort of entity that can breast-feed my daughter, God isn't the sort of entity to have intentions or desires.

    Nevertheless, the original poster may object, that simply proves the point. Because God is eternal and can't have intentions, He couldn't have created our imperfect, intention-riddled world. This leads to the second objection.

    Consider this property of omnipotence. It's consistent with this property that God would "be able" to create not only a single world, but all possible worlds. In fact, being all-powerful would probably necessitate this. So, there's the actual world---the one you and I inhabit and which we're very familiar with---but also a great many possible worlds that don't resemble the actual world in any way.

    This world---the actual world---with all of its intentions, desires and general unfinished business is but one possible world among many. Just because there's incompleteness in the actual world, and given the existence of all other possible worlds, this is not inconsistent with God being a perfect, complete, eternal being.


    I like the OP's argument. It's well thought out, carefully considered and isn't a bunch of superficial, gratuitous shots. There just isn't a proof for or against the existence of God that's successful (if there were such a proof, there would be no more to say). Theology doesn't work that way.

    The best any of us atheists (or theists for that matter) can do is to go about our being as though God doesn't exist and, borrowing from William James, our successful experiences of the world will make God's non-existence a matter of truth.
     
  13. heeh2

    heeh2 Senior Member

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    You do not need proof 'against' god, you need proof 'for' it. If you want something to say other than 'where is the evidence' just quote the bible lol.
     
  14. ChangeHappens

    ChangeHappens Member

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  15. ChangeHappens

    ChangeHappens Member

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  16. tikoo

    tikoo Senior Member

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    may i believe that all of life is conscious ? the effect of
    this consciousness and intention is special motion . what
    good to the universe is it - this mojo of eatin here and
    shitin there and moving stuff around ? maybe it will be
    life is the ultimate power that defeats entropy so that the
    universe may go on and on . maybe life will fail .

    oooo ... life is strong . is it loved ?
     
  17. ChangeHappens

    ChangeHappens Member

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    I don't understand you very well.

    :confused:

    Wish I could.
     
  18. I guess I think of God as "the dreamer," more or less. The vast superstructure of mind that surrounds us. To me that isn't limiting; it would be just as limiting to say you can't imagine God because God doesn't exist.

    I don't think of omniscience in a sense of human language. I don't think God's knowledge would be anything like an encyclopedia of factoids, but essentially God's being itself. To be is to know. So, essentially I think God is feeling more so than reasoning.
     
  19. jamgrassphan

    jamgrassphan Get up offa that thing Lifetime Supporter

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    I agree. It's absurd to try to apply human reason (or science for that matter) to a supposed omnipotent/omniscient being.

    If philosophy (or science) - and I think we can agree that they are related - had advanced to the point of total understanding of an ever expanding and potentially infinite universe (or universes), then, and only then, would I accept the premise that the concept of "God" could be proven or disproven. If we accept the concept of an infinite universe, then this is clearly not possible. I don't blame you for trying, but you must know that it's pointless.

    I'm not trying to convince you that God exists. I am trying to convince you of the futility and irony of trying to disprove something that you're already convinced doesn't exist. I'm also calling into question, in a round about way, your motivation for attempting to validate your own beliefs, if your so passionately convinced that "God" is an artifice.

    And finally, I thought we were having a rhetorical debate.

    "If you believe this, how can you apply you (sic) own reasoning to come to such a conclusion???"

    I never said anything about what I believed - belief and reason are not mutually inclusive or exclusive. I was playing the devil's advocate. It is just as irrational or "absurd" to presume that one can't use reason and logic to argue for the existence of "God" as it is irrational and absurd to presume that God is rational, logical, or shares anything that resembles the motivations of man. The Christian bible is said to have been divinely inspired, NOT written by the hand of God, but written by the hand of divinely inspired men - not perfect, not omniscient - but imperfect and fallible men. The Christian bible, by it's own account, must then be an imperfect text (though you won't hear many Christians agreeing with that).

    The fact is, the Christian bible is filled with examples of divinely inspired men and prophets misunderstanding God. How could they not? They are men afterall, not God. So when you quote an example of a man writing that God is angry (and even if the man putting the words to the page or tablet is quoting God directly) you cannot assume that "Anger" describes anything more than what this imperfect, mortal, man has done his best to describe with his imperfect words. So how can use the word "anger" to prove your point about "lacking" and "intention". I would argue that the "texts" you're basing your premise upon are by their very nature incapable of being used logically in any argument with regard to the existence of "God" if by "God" we mean an omnipotent/omniscient/omnipresent being that created the universe.

    In fact the only document in the Christian sphere that could potentially be used would be the tablets of the ten commandments, as these were allegedly a document (the only document) that was written directly by the hand of the Christian God, and furthermore - you'd have to actually have the tablets in hand (which we don't) and be able to prove (which we can't) that they were in fact written by the hand of God.

    Again, I say, that Logic and Science are, and will remain, incapable of proving or disproving the existence of "God". It's a VAIN exercise in futility to try. In fact, one could argue (and I'm not) that logic and science's hopeless inability to prove or disprove the existence of "God", or even to adequately describe "God", is in itself proof that "God" exists. Afterall, how could mortal men have even conceived of the notion of "God" if Logic and Science are the only tools to arrive at any legitimate truth or belief in the universe?
     
  20. Serena03

    Serena03 Member

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    The mind is still limited when it is left only to stretch on God's potential characteristics, especially when the 'dreaming' is left up to God. God is often accommodated anyway to fit any logical explanation given; nevertheless the real explanation is of the works of science with a new name.

    No one can entirely say that God doesn't exist, you don't necessarily have to rule out God, thus many will tend to stop at the easy answer of a creator when they become lost in their own search for the truth since it requires no logic. But wherever God dwells, there has been no found pathways, which is why science at least tends to rule it out, even an imaginative pathway which holds subjectivity still is not anymore justified, especially if they are looking for truth. It's all really a failed and superfluous hypothesis in the actuality of a random and chaotic universe. The intricate workings of nature does not need to be in the hands of a single creator, nature is essentially the antithesis of 'creation.'

    God regarded as another 'feeling' is just another passive indication as a subordination and product of the human conscious, without 'faith' God is virtually dead without any nourishment to grow. That's why it is easy to say God is beyond our reason, our language, logic and so forth. We can easily invent the 'perfect' character that gives guidance, condolence, power and so on to meet our needs that is instantly disprovable, that is the power of the mind. We don't need it, we just want it. But really it's our own inner self that can carry all these self-help features, but would rather pass them off in the hands of an ideal entity as sort of a longing for a 'parent.' It's only the human animal that can create concepts beyond their own understanding, animals already have a sort of subconscious satisfaction, for a God is not necessary for them.

    The conscious itself is a needy and greedy entity that is really looking for nothing more than self-satisfaction and not necessarily 'truth,' however true that may be from means of postulation.
     
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