Just supposing...........

[Shaker]

Where?

[BashfulAnthony]

Where?

M41  -  do keep up.

[Shaker]

# 41 doesn't answer it at all, unless you meant in the entirely obvious sense that a non-existent entity clearly can't prevent anyone from doing anything.

Do you suppose that if a god that exists, knows about evil (leaving aside the issue of whether it created it in the first place), knows how to stop it and could do but doesn't, has any claim to morality whatever?

[BashfulAnthony]

# 41 doesn't answer it at all, unless you meant in the entirely obvious sense that a non-existent entity clearly can't prevent anyone from doing anything.

Do you suppose that if a god that exists, knows about evil (leaving aside the issue of whether it created it in the first place), knows how to stop it and could do but doesn't has any claim to morality whatever?

It is called the freedom to choose your own actions, free of coercion.

[Shaker]

There's no definitive evidence that we have such freedom as you describe, but let's say you're right for the sake of the argument. My system of morality wouldn't allow me to create or maintain the freedom of an adult to rape a child, for example; if I could un-create such a thing I would, and if I knew such a thing was going on I'd do everything I could to stop it. So would most people, actually; a very very small proportion would wring their hands and say, "Well, I know it's terrible, and I'd love to help, but it's really none of my business." Fewer still would say, "Good." Both would be utterly monstrous.

If I had good reason to believe that in my street (hell, anywhere) a child was being abused in some way - in fact let's not be speciesist about it; if I thought an animal was being abused - I would (a) have the desire to stop it, (b) know how to go about stopping it (by alerting relevant authorities - police; social services; RSPCA and so forth) and (c) would go about stopping it by putting (b) into action. That would be the moral thing to do. Folding my arms and either supportively or even reluctantly placing the supposed freedom of the abuser to abuse above the right of the child or animal not to suffer would not be the moral thing to do. In fact such an act of omission would be downright immoral. In a case such as this I have (1) knowledge of an evil act; (2) knowledge of how to stop it; (3) the desire to stop it and (4) the ability to stop it. Sadly there are a vast number of cases where human beings possess (1), (2) and (3) but, crucially, not (4). For example, I would stop the suffering of children and animals everywhere if I had it in my power, but alas I don't. And that's just for an ordinary human being. Turning to any tolerably traditional conception of a god, however, it's not at all clear which out of (1), (2), (3) and (4) apply, but one thing is for sure - it  can be any combination of at most any three, but it can't be all four simultaneously.

That, as I've said before, is the difference between most people and the god you think exists.

Well; that and the fact that people actually do exist, of course.

[trippymonkey]

Your God's not a very good parent, is He?

Would YOU as a parent just step back from, say, your 5 year old about to run across a road & just say 'well, he WANTED to do it so.... I let him'
Social services would be round before the kid had hit the ground !!!!

[cyberman]

WELLL
We have all these 'Christians' here trying to convince us THEIR God has naff all to do with all the bad things that occur on earth so SOMEONE - SOMETHING'S responsible, no? 

Who said he has naff all to do with it? How many are "all these Christians"?

[jeremyp]

It does point up Dan Barker's famous point, however, that so many - in fact most - humans are vastly, vastly, vastly morally better than God is depicted.

I guess Barker didn't notice the holocaust, or genocide in Rwanda, Idi Amin, or Da'ish, or Auschwitz-Birkenau, or Srebrenica, Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan, thousands of murderers, rapists, crooks and cheats, etc, etc, etc.  Apparently, there have only been 12 years in recorded history when there has not been at least one war somewhere on the planet!!

God is depicted to have wiped out almost everybody at one point.

[Shaker]

... which makes even the most ambitious genocidal tyrant or dictator look very much the idle under-achiever, doesn't it?

[cyberman]

It's amazing how fundamentalist atheists can be when it suits them. They cannot conceive of the Bible not being true about God - in their 'minds', if God exists then everything in the Bible must be true.

[Shaker]

It's amazing how fundamentalist atheists can be when it suits them. They cannot conceive of the Bible not being true about God - in their 'minds', if God exists then everything in the Bible must be true.

Is there some specific reason as to why you placed scare quotes around the word minds with regard to atheists?

[Sassy]

The crazy 'you must be 'saved', or go to hell', dogma was true. How would you, as a 'born  again'Christian, feel if someone as wicked as Hitler made a deathbed conversion, having never done anything decent in his life, yet an atheist who died trying to save others from his evil regime went to hell?

I just can't get my head around how anyone could find anything loving about a deity who created such an unfair scenario.

But that wouldn't and couldn't happen, could it?

The bible shows that to be an impossibility.

Do you want to figure it out?

[Shaker]

Your God's not a very good parent, is He?

Would YOU as a parent just step back from, say, your 5 year old about to run across a road & just say 'well, he WANTED to do it so.... I let him'
Social services would be round before the kid had hit the ground !!!!

The standard traditional theistic answer, dress it up how you may, seems to be that it's more important to respect the kid's freedom to run into the road than to stop him. Hence the god in whom certain theists purport to believe apparently values the freedom of a comparative handful of human beings to build Auschwitz-Birkenau far over the lives of the 1.1 million who entered the place in cattle trucks and left through a chimney.

Not something that I pretend to understand, but then of course if you look for logic, reason, common sense or consistency - or, frequently, any basic humanity - in any of this religion malarkey you'll seek in vain.

I think all atheists are aware, and I don't know but suspect that perhaps most theists are perfectly well aware but loth to admit, that the invocation of free will in the face of evil is really no more than an absolutely desperate ploy to maintain at all costs an utterly untenable belief.

[BashfulAnthony]

It does point up Dan Barker's famous point, however, that so many - in fact most - humans are vastly, vastly, vastly morally better than God is depicted.

I guess Barker didn't notice the holocaust, or genocide in Rwanda, Idi Amin, or Da'ish, or Auschwitz-Birkenau, or Srebrenica, Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan, thousands of murderers, rapists, crooks and cheats, etc, etc, etc.  Apparently, there have only been 12 years in recorded history when there has not been at least one war somewhere on the planet!!

God is depicted to have wiped out almost everybody at one point.

Yes, that's the God of the OT, which I reject as the true depiction of God, as I have explained many times now.

[BashfulAnthony]

There's no definitive evidence that we have such freedom as you describe, but let's say you're right for the sake of the argument. My system of morality wouldn't allow me to create or maintain the freedom of an adult to rape a child, for example; if I could un-create such a thing I would, and if I knew such a thing was going on I'd do everything I could to stop it. So would most people, actually; a very very small proportion would wring their hands and say, "Well, I know it's terrible, and I'd love to help, but it's really none of my business." Fewer still would say, "Good." Both would be utterly monstrous.

If I had good reason to believe that in my street (hell, anywhere) a child was being abused in some way - in fact let's not be speciesist about it; if I thought an animal was being abused - I would (a) have the desire to stop it, (b) know how to go about stopping it (by alerting relevant authorities - police; social services; RSPCA and so forth) and (c) would go about stopping it by putting (b) into action. That would be the moral thing to do. Folding my arms and either supportively or even reluctantly placing the supposed freedom of the abuser to abuse above the right of the child or animal not to suffer would not be the moral thing to do. In fact such an act of omission would be downright immoral. In a case such as this I have (1) knowledge of an evil act; (2) knowledge of how to stop it; (3) the desire to stop it and (4) the ability to stop it. Sadly there are a vast number of cases where human beings possess (1), (2) and (3) but, crucially, not (4). For example, I would stop the suffering of children and animals everywhere if I had it in my power, but alas I don't. And that's just for an ordinary human being. Turning to any tolerably traditional conception of a god, however, it's not at all clear which out of (1), (2), (3) and (4) apply, but one thing is for sure - it  can be any combination of at most any three, but it can't be all four simultaneously.

That, as I've said before, is the difference between most people and the god you think exists.

Well; that and the fact that people actually do exist, of course.

Well, you say most people; but as I pointed out, if you take all those who have been killed in war and genocide, and then add all those who murder, and cheat and back-bite, are unkind and uncaring; the everyday rivalries and bitterness; the lack of empathy with fellow men;  the fact that the minority are well-fed and healthy, and throw away millions of tons of food every year, whilst millions die of starvation; the callous disregard for the planet we live on;  not to mention the appalling way we treat the animal kingdom: how can you make much of a case for human-kind as being good and moral? It all makes the OT God look like a rank amateur!

Look up this, for starters:  "List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll."  All I've listed, and more, put the human race on the dock as foul and murderous in the exreme.  Even the fictitious God of the OT cannot come close to matching it.

[Shaker]

Well, you say most people; but as I pointed out, if you take all those who have been killed in war and genocide

You can't invoke these as examples of human depravity though as in the case of war most and in the case of genocide all these are victims, not perpetrators. Seventy-plus years ago millions of people died, more or less willingly when you come right down to it, to serve a cause which aimed to stop the people who built Treblinka and the ideology that made them build it.

and then add all those who murder, and cheat and back-bite, are unkind and uncaring; the everyday rivalries and bitterness; the lack of empathy with fellow men;  the fact that the minority are well-fed and healthy, and throw away millions of tons of food every year, whilst millions die of starvation; the callous disregard for the planet we live on;  not to mention the appalling way we treat the animal kingdom: how can you make much of a case for human-kind as being good and moral?

Humans are a varied bunch - there's enough of them for them to be so. The things you describe are perfectly consistent with the naturalist view - that we are, as Christopher Hitchens put it, largely hairless apes not ever so long from the savannah, with over-active adrenal glands and a fear of the dark - but difficult, some would say impossible to reconcile with the theistic view, which requires a mind-boggling amount of Procrustean logic-chopping and really barrel-bottom-scraping rationalisation and explaining away.

[BashfulAnthony]

Well, you say most people; but as I pointed out, if you take all those who have been killed in war and genocide

You can't invoke these as examples of human depravity though as in the case of war most and in the case of genocide all these are victims, not perpetrators. Seventy-plus years ago millions of people died, more or less willingly when you come right down to it, to serve a cause which aimed to stop the people who built Treblinka and the ideology that made them build it.

and then add all those who murder, and cheat and back-bite, are unkind and uncaring; the everyday rivalries and bitterness; the lack of empathy with fellow men;  the fact that the minority are well-fed and healthy, and throw away millions of tons of food every year, whilst millions die of starvation; the callous disregard for the planet we live on;  not to mention the appalling way we treat the animal kingdom: how can you make much of a case for human-kind as being good and moral?

Humans are a varied bunch - there's enough of them for them to be so. The things you describe are perfectly consistent with the naturalist view - that we are, as Christopher Hitchens put it, largely hairless apes not ever so long from the savannah, with over-active adrenal glands and a fear of the dark - but difficult, some would say impossible to reconcile with the theistic view, which requires a mind-boggling amount of Procrustean logic-chopping and really barrel-bottom-scraping rationalisation and explaining away.

Have you looked at the site I suggested?  That is what is truly mind-boggling.  When I consider the everyday lack of care and casual unkindness, not to say downright unpleasantness of the average human at some time or other, then I find it indefensible.  Compare all that murk with Jesus' teaching of love and forgiveness and try and equate it with His own example of love, above all things.  The human race is unbeatable in its record of violence and inhumane disregard for its fellows.   

[cyberman]

It's amazing how fundamentalist atheists can be when it suits them. They cannot conceive of the Bible not being true about God - in their 'minds', if God exists then everything in the Bible must be true.

Is there some specific reason as to why you placed scare quotes around the word minds with regard to atheists?

I have never heard them called scare quotes before! Sorry they scared you!

And, yes, there is

[floo]

I think some might guess why my reaction to post 66 is hollow laughter!

[Shaker]

I have never heard them called scare quotes before! Sorry they scared you!

They didn't scare me. That's the standard term.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes

And, yes, there is

And what is that reason?

[Aruntraveller]

The human race is unbeatable in its record of violence and inhumane disregard for its fellows.   

That would be the same human race that God created in his own image?

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 2

[floo]

The human race is unbeatable in its record of violence and inhumane disregard for its fellows.   

That would be the same human race that God created in his own image?

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 2

Just supposing the deity had created us in its own evil image, fortunately many humans have overcome that terrible calamity and are decent people!

[Sassy]

The human race is unbeatable in its record of violence and inhumane disregard for its fellows.   

That would be the same human race that God created in his own image?

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 2

Before the fall... everything was good... but like mankind today they do as they wish and not as is best for them...

So maybe you should read the bible and see God is good and everything he made was good... Then man sinned and fell away and hence we have what was mans own doing and the reason... Like you writing the above, Adam thought he knew best too. Seems it is ongoing....

[floo]

The human race is unbeatable in its record of violence and inhumane disregard for its fellows.   

That would be the same human race that God created in his own image?

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 2

Before the fall... everything was good... but like mankind today they do as they wish and not as is best for them...

So maybe you should read the bible and see God is good and everything he made was good... Then man sinned and fell away and hence we have what was mans own doing and the reason... Like you writing the above, Adam thought he knew best too. Seems it is ongoing....

WHAT IS GOOD ABOUT THE BIBLICAL DEITY? No one seems to be able to answer that question!

[Sassy]

The human race is unbeatable in its record of violence and inhumane disregard for its fellows.   

That would be the same human race that God created in his own image?

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 2

Before the fall... everything was good... but like mankind today they do as they wish and not as is best for them...

So maybe you should read the bible and see God is good and everything he made was good... Then man sinned and fell away and hence we have what was mans own doing and the reason... Like you writing the above, Adam thought he knew best too. Seems it is ongoing....

WHAT IS GOOD ABOUT THE BIBLICAL DEITY? No one seems to be able to answer that question!

You are really show  ignorance if you cannot fathom that out for yourself even without reading the bible....