This is not any kind of world that a purportedly powerful creator would have caused, knowing how it would turn out, unless he's a sadist.
--Geena Safire

You are quite confident in your own personal omniscience, Miss Safire.

Reply 5 of 5

5.) 'Good faith' means you argue believing what you say and with the intention presenting evidence to support what you believe; as in, I can take it on 'good faith' that you're not dicking around with me

No, that's not what "good faith" means.

Good faith Honesty or sincerity of intention.

Is there anything I have written that leads you to believe that I am not writing with honesty or sincerity of intention? In all that I have written, do you see an intention for me to 'dick around with you'?

And if you can require me to present evidence to support what I believe, I can require you to do the same, starting with presenting evidence for the existence of your God. No? I didn't think so. Stop dicking around with me.

6.) "go home" as in; if you are dicking around, you should leave, it's not helping you or me for you to stay if this is true.

If you don't want to converse with me, then don't reply when I comment. Conversation over! See how easy that was? You can be here and I can be here and you can ignore me. "Simple as that."

It is not up to you whether I stay or leave SN nor is it your place to tell me what or how to write.

Reply 4 of 5

4.) And no, you didn't address my criticism, except in the most basic sense that you acknowledged that I wrote it. I mean 'addressed' as you either admit I'm correct or you present a counter-example, or admit you have no refutation.

Your initial reply first said that my proposition "would render personal choices irrelevant and thus violate free will." I replied, "The real person on each planet could either act with good will toward others, or could lie and steal and rape and kill (or at least believe he's killing). But the other 'people', not being real, would not actually suffer do to the real person's bad acts. Complete free will."

I directly addressed your criticism.

Your initial reply then said that the quote I used assumes that I would understand God perfectly and would be capable of determining how God functions and so forth. You said that I would have to be God in order to validly judge God. I replied, "The morality inside of me is the only morality from which I can make a decision about whether something is good or bad." That is, I wasn't assuming that I could understand God or God's ways; I was writing based on my own morality.

Based on the only morality I have, I wrote that it doesn't seem to me that God -- as Christians claim God to be, if extant, and the world the way it is -- would be a being worthy of worship. If I can't judge God, as described, to be evil without being God myself, how can you judge God to be good without being God yourself?

I directly addressed your criticism.

Reply 3 of 5

Lionel: That excludes the fact that such a reality would render personal choices irrelevant and thus violate free will.

Geena: In what way would one's personal choices be irrelevant? The real person on each planet could either act with good will toward others, or could lie and steal and rape and kill (or at least believe he's killing). But the other 'people', not being real, would not actually suffer do to the real person's bad acts. Complete free will.

3.) Your argument was about what you think would happen if God was real and why you thought that that intellectual inconsistency proved that he wasn't real. My question was in respect to how, what you thought God would have be like, couldn't be consistent with the qualities God was claimed, by Christians, to have. So either we're talking about different gods or you were just crafting a lazy argument that essentially just asserted "God isn't real" all over again. You then countered my criticism with the assertion that God isn't real.

In my original comment, I didn't make an argument about what I thought would happen if God were real. I didn't write anything about intellectual inconsistency. I didn't write that anything proved God wasn't real nor did I assert that God isn't real.

In my reply, also, I did not make an assertion that God isn't real. I did say: "I know you believe in a deity and you know that I don't. I know you can't talk about him as if he didn't exist without saying "if." I can't talk about it as if it did exist unless I say "if." That's why I said, "if that deity did exist."

In my original comment, I proposed a scenario, a way God could have created the universe, in which free will could be preserved and the suffering of one person at the hands of another could be avoided. "Free will" is not a valid argument against "the problem of evil."

In what way did I say anything about what God would have to be like?

In what way is the deity in my proposition inconsistent with the "qualities God is claimed, by Christians, to have"?

Lazy: Not liking to work hard or to be active. Not having much activity. Moving slowly.

In what way do you consider my proposition to be 'lazy'?

Reply 2 of 5

...as opposed to throwing out "what if" scenarios for a religion and then blithely applying your personal moral standards to it as proof it isn't real

I don't talk about morality or great suffering 'blithely.'

2.) 'blithely' in the sense your argument is lazy and lack intellectual rigor, not that you don't care about morals or people.

Blithe: Showing a casual and cheerful indifference considered to be callous or improper. synonyms: casual, indifferent, unconcerned, unworried, untroubled, uncaring, careless, heedless, thoughtless

'Blithely' has nothing to do with 'laziness' or 'lack of intellectual rigor.' It has to do with being callous and thoughtless.

I repeat, "I don't talk about morality or great suffering 'blithely'."

(You can google the definitions for words before you use them.)

Reply 1 of 5

Geena (a
few comments back): "If God created the universe, with its hundred billion galaxies, each of them with a hundred billion stars, most of which have planets, God could have put each real person on their own planet, populated with other artificial people acting very real, as in The Truman Show. This way, all the necessary challenges could be presented to the person to develop spiritually without the person having to suffer at the hands of other real people who act with great evil because God feels the need to give them free will."

1.) The point isn't that you made a claim that isn't consist with the RCC. The point is that you made a claim inconsistent with theology...to disprove theology with
theology...

I didn't make a claim at all. I didn't try to disprove anything. I just made a proposition: "If God did X (i.e., is powerful enough to have done that), then God could have done Y."

It was meant to propose that if God had wanted people not to suffer, God could have made the universe in such a way that people didn't suffer in a way that doesn't violate free will. "Free will" is not a valid argument against "the problem of evil."

Reply 15 of 15

Lionel: This isn't a science fair and this isn't a criticism of what is scientifically true; it has to do with semantics and it's a criticism of philosophy and intellectual rigor. If Atheism is true, then there is no distinction between self-help an other-help there is only self-help. If one takes the tenets of atheism and orients their worldview around them; you arrive at solipsism and nihilism; but solipsism is what applies here. Since all atheists would agree that there is no soul, then there exists no mechanism to know if other conscious's exist. The only intellectually honest answer you can arrive at is that other people respond to stimuli via action potentials in nervous tissue; you can't know another mind the way you know your own. (Lionel wrote 100 more words after this to which Geena did not explicitly reply.)

(Geena quoted Lionel and replied, in order, to each statement Lionel made (above), up to the point where Geena wrote, "As to the rest of your solipsistic fantasy, I already noted above that no atheists I know of are solipsists. Plus, I'm not sure your take on solipsism is right either. So I'll just stop here."

15.) If you cut up an argument, take select quotes out of context, and address them outside of chronological order, you're responses aren't going to be very good...

First, I replied to the points of your argument in the order in which you wrote them.

Second, I quoted every word you had written before I replied to it, so they are not out of context.

Third, I replied to your entire comment up to the point where I just gave up.

Fourth, if you make an argument that is based on several parts, and I have an issue with each part, then it seems relevant to address them part by part.

I could have just said, "You're wrong about atheism. You're wrong about science. You're wrong about equivalence. You're wrong about red herrings. You're wrong about 'true' and 'false' wrt atheism. You're wrong about worldviews. You're wrong about philosophy. You're wrong about psychology. You're wrong about synonyms. You're wrong about 'spritualist.' You're wrong about not being rude. You're wrong about my replying 'outside of chronological order'."

But that doesn't seem like a good response to me.

What kind of response would be a "good response" for you if I disagree with nearly everything you said?