It’s only 4 minutes long, but it’s just packed with ‘clever’ arguments for god.
If you don’t feel like wasting 4 minutes on this guy — and I don’t blame you — here is his logical argument: if, in the future, people can invent an app that lets you instantly teleport a package to Nebraska, therefore God. If, in the future, we could 3-D print human tissue, therefore God. If, in the future, we decide not to color our tech in sleek black boxes, but use earth tones instead, therefore God. If you can imagine miraculous future technologies, then why can’t you imagine God?
OK, his first example has physical limits that make it extremely unlikely, his second is one researchers are already working on, and his third is trivial. Fundamentally, though, I don’t think you get to analogize human technological progress to a god poofing things into existence by miracles.
Man, that guy is thick.
IF, small word – big meaning my high school English teacher used to note if we used it in an essay. Why do I remember stuff like that?
God was omnipresent during the turn of the century ‘beige box’ era, I guess.
It sounds like a dumber version of Smart’s Jubilate Agno (M is music and therefore he is God) without the artistic merits.
‘Poofing’? Does Poof mean the same in the US as it does in the UK?
I think I’ve heard variations of apologetic in the past. Something along the lines of “if you can imagine the most perfect thing in the world, then something slightly more perfect is God” or some such bullshit. I immediately dismiss theistic arguments these days the same way a doctor should dismiss the four humors theory of medicine or a physicist should reject the idea of luluminiferous aether: It’s nonsense by default.
I can imagine quite a few mythological and fictitious beings–from mermaids to Great Cthulhu, but my ability to dream up a magical being doesn’t make them real.
Were they beige enough to be used in Tom Brokaw’s house?
(Homestar Runner reference.)
Seems like a Christian stumbled over Arthur C Clarkes’s Third law ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws ) and decided to try reverse engineering it so that trying to develop sufficiently advanced tech = magic = Gawd!
Becoz if tech can’t yet do it but they’re trying to something something god already can do it becoz magic! Thgus GAWD!!TY!!1!
Thereby totally missing the point not that Clarke wasn’t one to offering supernatural; undue credibility at times..(Cough, the otherwise excellent & thought-provoking Childhood’s End, amoing others, cough.)
Also not to taxonomise “ïdiots” here but non-sequiteur much?
Or that Clarke story where those (Buddhist~ish?) monks get all the names of God via supercomputer and the universe then blinks out whatever that was called?
Then there was the admittedly better twist he put on the supposed Xmas star being a novae or supernovae that wiped out an amazing alien civilisation..
#4: Yeah, this is vaguely the ontological argument, only made much, much dumber.
…if, in the future, people can invent an app that lets you instantly teleport a package to Nebraska, therefore God.
But if the package ends up in Texas instead, therefore Chthulu?
If you can imagine miraculous future technologies, then why can’t you imagine God?
What makes this idiot think we can’t imagine God? There’s virtually no limit to the things we can imagine, with or without actually believing they’re real.
…Something along the lines of “if you can imagine the most perfect thing in the world, then something slightly more perfect is God” or some such bullshit.
I think that’s a variation of some Medieval bullshit by St. Anselm: “I can conceive of that than which no greater can be conceived.” Like, if I imagine something that’s perfect (because I imagined it so), then that thing would have to be real, because otherwise it wouldn’t be perfect, therefore the thing I imagined is God, therefore God is real, Checkmate, Atheists, NEENER! Or something like that. Does my explanation make it clearer? If not, it’s not my fault.
#7 The Nine Billion Names of God
I really like that story. He also wrote a short story about a Jesuit on spaceship traveling to a star that went supernova causing the star of Bethlehem while wiping out an entire civilization in the process.
I can imagine a lot of things but can tell my imaginings are FICTION.
Such stupid navel lint weaving arguments based on the progress of technology and computers can only have one inane result…some technofascist dingbat asserting we live in a simulation because excess weed smoking in a hot tub he was then kicked out of:
Indirectly based upon a movie that took inspiration from a postmodernist who thought signification had superseded referentiality. The movie was actually about emerging from Plato’s cave but got lost in the smell of its own flatulence.
@SteveoR #7. Yes, Clarke’s postscript to Childhood’s End admits his credulity when writing it and Randi’s convincing him that Geller was a fake.Clarke continued to believe in telepathy though. I also admire greatly The Star and the irony of a Jesuit finding the civilisation. The Nine Billion names is very good too though he points out the problem of the speed of light himself.
These aren’t reasons to believe.
They are rationalizations to believe and not very good ones at that.
People don’t believe in the gods because of the evidence for their existence.
That evidence is nonexistent.
Research has shown that the main reason people believe in the gods, is childhood indoctrination, i.e. being born and raised in a believing family.
If you can imagine teleporting packages to Nebraska, you can imagine that the gods exists.
Then again, if you can imagine teleporting packages to Nebraska, you can imagine that the Invisible Pink Unicorn exists.
All the proofs for the existence of the gods also prove that the Invisible Pink Unicorn, Elves, Fairies, Orcs, Dragons, UFO aliens, and Mickey Mouse also exist.
Fooled by a friend’s card trick –> god
Your sportsball team wins championship –> god
You snag popular toy for child’s xmas –> god
Your home survives a wildfire while your neighbor’s homes don’t –> god
Larry @ #15 — “Your home survives a wildfire while your neighbor’s homes don’t –> god”
Yet, you all go to the same church praying to the same god with equal fervor —> god is fickle
robro @16
Neighbors weren’t living right so had it coming. Sparing your house indicates God’s favor. Don’t gloat as you comfort neighbors knowing they will see hell.
Hemidactylus @ #17 — Ok, but if it’s your house that burns then god works in mysterious ways.
If God does exist, he (she?) could clear up the confusion in no time by simply making an appearance and clearing up the confusion. That he (she?) does not do so tells me that either there is no God, or God doesn’t care if humans get it right or not. And if the latter, then if God doesn’t care, why should I?
It strikes me that if you are God, and you want the whole world to know of your existence and your expectations, merely leaving behind a now 2000 year old book is just about the least effective way to make that happen imaginable.
And even if God does exist, there are literally hundreds of religions and I have no means to independently verify the veracity of any of them. A simple appearance from God might shed light on that question as well.
So between God refusing to clear up the question of his very existence, and then refusing to clear up the question of which religion best describes him, he really doesn’t strike me as caring all that much about whether humans get it right or not. And if he doesn’t care, why should I?
submoron @12: I didn’t really think the speed of light was a problem there. God was causing the Universe to end, and that included both the stars, and all the light they’d been emitting, ceasing to exist at about the same time. And besides, that story was a quick riff on a certain religious belief, so technical realism wasn’t necessary or expected.
Of course I can imagine God. God is imaginary.
lemmy is god
awomanofnoimportance @20
Actually all those religions prove that the Devil exists and that he/she/it invented those religions to fool people into believing theirs is the only true one and do stupid things. And so that people would kill each other over not believing the “true” word of god and doing religion wrong.
Also, I can imagine a god so powerful that he can even destroy a god. And a god so powerful that no god can destroy it. So no all powerful god can exist.
@25 Jean:
My favorite philosophical conundrum:
If God is all-powerful, can He create a stone so heavy that Him hitting Himself in the head with it would explain the change in personality He underwent between the Old and New Testaments?
Um, pantheism makes that sort of thing moot.
(Gotta love how people talk about the Abrahamic deity when they talk about ‘God’)
John Morales, No. 27: Actually, the Abrahamic deity got his start as a Levantine storm god; he was essentially the Near East’s equivalent of Thor. We see this in the Psalms which talk about God riding on the clouds and sending forth the thunder. For some reason lost to history, he became the primary deity of the Jews back when they were a nomadic people, and once the Jews conquered Canaan he then became the primary god of the entire region. So, anyone who worships or prays to the Abrahamic deity is actually worshipping a Levantine storm god whose name would have been lost to history had the Jews not been successful in their conquest.
Allah is of similar lineage; in pre-Islamic pagan Arabia he was the god of the moon, which is why the crescent moon is a symbol of Islam.
Yeah, before that they practiced henotheism; Anat and Baal and Dagon and of course Asherah who was Yahweh’s consort.
John Morales @ # 29 – Last I heard, El was Asherah’s main squeeze (maybe she let Yahweh in the back door once in a while).
No reports have survived as to what Asherah thought about her official husband getting mashed up with both her Negev war-god neighbor and her storm-god son Baal, but it probably simplified seating arrangements at family get-togethers.
Point is, people generally talk about the Abrahamic deity, which is but the tiniest sliver of the goddish landscape. And they don’t realise they’re doing that, and granting it some sort of intellectual heft thereby.
I can imagine this guy arguing with Oolon Colluphid -> !god
(Gotta love how people talk about the Abrahamic deity when they talk about ‘God’)
That’s because the bullshit arguments addressed in the OP are being pushed by apologists for (various interpretations of) “the” Abrahamic deity. We all know there’s other pantheons, but (AFAIK at least) none of them require the sort of silly-assed mental gymnastics to “work” like what we hear from Abrahamic apologists; so they’re not relevant to conversations like this one.
RB, you’re blustering.
Name but one single example of a pantheon that does not require silly-assed mental gymnastics to “work” like what we hear from Abrahamic apologists. Go on.
[technically, ‘are’ other pantheons, and of course many religions are not deistic or theistic or even supernatural. Right? Pan theon — all gods.
Actually, I can indeed think of one god in one pantheon (fantasy, of course): Howard’s Hyborian pantheon, where the boss deity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyborian_Age#Crom) was kinda badass.
“Crom is the chief god of the Cimmerian pantheon, and he lives on a great mountain, from where he sends forth doom or death. It is considered useless to call upon Crom, because he is a gloomy and savage god who hates weaklings. However, Crom gives a man courage, free will, and the strength to fight his enemies, which the Cimmerians believe is all that is needed from him.[11] Crom doesn’t care if individuals live or die, and his name is typically only invoked as an oath or curse. He is the only member of the Cimmerian pantheon named with any regularity.
Crom is never depicted as directly intervening or otherwise explicitly causing any event in the original Conan stories by Robert E. Howard.”
Not much in the way of gymnastics there, eh? :)
Name but one single example of a pantheon that does not require silly-assed mental gymnastics to “work” like what we hear from Abrahamic apologists. Go on.
Any pantheon or set of beliefs that doesn’t claim their god(s) is/are ALL-powerful, ALL-knowing, has a plan that covers every atom in the universe always, and is/are totally just and perfect in all aspects. The ancient Greeks and Norse, for example, pretty much admitted their gods were assholes with the manners and morals of either spoiled children or deranged warriors (or chickenhawks); so no one felt any need to rationalize either unfair circumstances or inability to prove their gods’ existence.
(PS: How is it “blustering” to state that we all know there’s non-Abrahamic pantheons? Are you drunk again?)
Because a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon_(religion) definitionally refers to a set of gods of the theistic variety, not just the monotheistic variety, RB.
By definition, no monotheistic religion has a pantheon.
You know, the Abrahamic religions.
Your scholarly erudition is quite remarkable.
Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Native_American_deities
Much variety: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neak_ta
[perhaps you intended to mean mythos, not pantheon?]
@10. kevinv : ” The Nine Billion Names of God. I really like that story. He also wrote a short story about a Jesuit on spaceship traveling to a star that went supernova causing the star of Bethlehem while wiping out an entire civilization in the process.”
Yes! That’s the one. Thanks.
Grew up reading Clarkle, Asimov, Heinlein and others. So many good novels, short stories & science essays.
@12, submoron : Yep. Thanks for that and those are the ones there too.
@16. robro :
Or even worse interpretation – God likes you more than your neighbir / you porayed harderand more sincerely than your neighbour.
Becoz God listens more to the prayers of an American hoping their sportsball team winjs or then find their keys than a n African child dying of hunger.
By definition, no monotheistic religion has a pantheon.
Okay…and…?
So, we are to imagine super-advanced technology fueled by foreskins? Seems like those could be 3D printed. Or mental anguish. Is God a pain-powered android that maintains itself by promoting suffering?
“Is God a pain-powered android that maintains itself by promoting suffering?”
Nah. “God’ is an inchoate vague concept that can be interpreted in innumerable ways.
(Abstractum, not concretum)
@44. Raging Bee : yet Christianity especially catholicism seems to be giving a good try. The trinity, the saints, the angels and demons…
You are entirely mistaken, StevoR, because you are ignorant.
And therefore your opinion is based on ignorance.
For you:
The Trinity is the concept of only one God who is perceived as three distinct persons: the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit — all these instantiations are co-equal, co-eternal, and consubstantial, meaning they share the same divine essence (the old iota argument). The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father, but all three are one God.
The saints are mortals who have passed the coil and now can intercede directly with God via their petitions.
The angels are not deities, they are servants of God.
(They’re the executives of the Divine)
The demons are fallen angels.
In short, a pantheon with only one deity is very much the trivial case — you know, like a set with only one element.
[and, of course, being ignorant you ignored the elephant: Marianism]
So, not only is the Earth only six thousand years old (and maybe flat to boot), and evolution doesn’t exist, but equality is not transitive either to these bozos?
OK, that’s it. We can quibble over the age of a few rocks or the provenance of some fossils, at least until the evidence becomes overwhelming in favor of one side, but math is math and you can’t just redefine it arbitrarily. This is like claiming to have found an odd sum of two even numbers for heaven’s sake.
(Somewhat tongue-in-cheek)
StevoR @7, kevinv @10, submoron @12:
Adapted to a short film in 2018 by Dominique Filhol.
The Nine Billion Names of God (14:32)
The Twilight Zone (1985) – S01E13 The Star (12:03)
* With a poem tacked on the end to soothe the Jesuit. Decidedly less soothing if the civilization’s destiny had been ‘fulfilled’ by a similar doom-bringing minority.
No, BB. You are evidently also very ignorant.
I wrote about Catholicism in particular (“especially catholicism” being my prompt), which itself is part of the 90% of Christian denominations/sects that subscribe to Trinitarianism, and Catholicism has zero problem with deep time or evolution or anything like that.
(The USA is very much an outlier when it comes to that sorta literalism)
[citation]
But hey, no need to take my word for it: https://www.catholiccrossreference.online/catechism/#!/search/253-256
(The beauty of the Roman Catholic Church is that every single bit of dogma is documented, and that every single supposed adherent must recite the credo which gives it primacy. Which is why the Pope is called the Primate)
@ ^ & various John Morales : Really? I thought that was becoz they reckon he smelt like a monkey! ;-) (Kidding.)
Yeah, marianism and the whole three in one diety Trinity non-sense seems like apretty good try at creatinga pantheiostic monotheism to me. Opinion not ignorance.
Also modern Catholics may generally now – with some exceptions* – be accepting of evolution and deep time but of course it’s past history here especially regarding astronomy and heliocentrism vs geocentrism is pretty, pretty bad. Burning Giordano Bruno at the stake, showing the instruments of torture to Galileo and sentencing him to house arrst, generally suppressing the science, etc..
.* See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_creationist_organisations
I feel a bit like Rob’s proxy here, but… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno
“Bruno was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges of denial of several core Catholic doctrines, including eternal damnation, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and transubstantiation. Bruno’s pantheism was not taken lightly by the church,[3] nor was his teaching of metempsychosis regarding the reincarnation of the soul. The Inquisition found him guilty, and he was burned at the stake in Rome’s Campo de’ Fiori in 1600.”
The problem was his religious views.
—
.* See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_creationist_organisations
Bah. They are not part of the actual Church, they’re just weirdos.
In short, they are not officially Catholic.
Jesus never told Peter “Prove that you can walk on water!”
Instead, He said “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”
Now apply that to Christians trying to prove the existence of God.
Lol. Imagine being so indoctrinated this makes any kind of sense. X-D
Catholic. But weirdos. Not like other Catholics. Catholic. Not officially Catholic. Just weird Catholic.
Morales, are you trying to say, “papists by hated by the pope”?
The saints are mortals who have passed the coil and now can intercede directly with God via their petitions. The angels are not deities, they are servants of God. The demons are fallen angels.
Actually, at least a few of those “saints” are gods assimilated from other pantheons and demoted so that the early Church could justify letting people continue worshipping their previous gods, as long as they agreed to call them something other than “gods.” “Angels” and “demons” are also borrowed from other peoples’ beliefs in various spirits. So in that sense, the Catholic Church is even more polytheistic than a lot of its European pagan forebears (which was also one of the charges levelled at the Church during the Protestant Reformation).
You are very slow.
They are not Catholic institutions, they are clubs for Catholics.
You really are clueless.
The Church both officially and unofficially doesn’t give a shit whether individual adherents believe in creationism or not, any more than they care whether they drink booze or smoke tobacco.
Where did you come across that claim?
(Go on, name one or two)
For your ref: https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_one/section_two/chapter_three/article_9/paragraph_5_the_communion_of_saints.html
Nope. Polytheism means more than one deity. You can see the Canon for yourself.
You’re thinking of syncretism where older traditions and symbols are incorporated and tolerated into the practice. The Church has had a couple of thousands of years’ practice at adapting to local conditions.
e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Muerte#History
@ ^ John Morales : The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit- seems like 3 deities not just one to me…
Yeah, the Trinity rubbish again. You might buy the intrepretations where that makes some kind of weird sense but I don’t.
Then as you noted in #49 there’s the Virgin Mother Mary…
We need to build a more ambitious god than the christian one.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
.https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/god-4
StevoR, if you want specifics, here: https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_one/section_two/chapter_one/article_1/paragraph_2_the_father.html
… says someone who’s sounding increasingly like a Catholic apologist on this here atheist forum …
You do amuse, BB.
Before one can diss some claim, one should know to what that claim refers.
That’s the point.
And when ignorant people claim the Trinity is about polytheism, well.
That’s about as ignorant as one gets.
Yes, it seems to them to be that, but it really, really is not.
It’s actually an instantiation of Fideism.
(Also, your perception that I sound like a Catholic apoligist is… well, the very opposite of reality)
@9
Every time I read that argument I laugh.
And yet every time anyone says something about Catholicism that you don’t like or think is unfair, you take it upon yourself to … defend Catholicism.
Interesting, that.
You are very slow, Beebee.
What part of “Before one can diss some claim, one should know to what that claim refers.”?
Look, I’ve seen (go Google it, in The Endless Thread) people claim Catholics can’t eat chocolate during Lent, that the Communion is a form of anthropophagy, and so on.
And over the 18 or so years I’ve been commenting here, I’ve probably done like half a dozen detailed explanations about the logical incoherence of the Trinity.
Seen when ignoramuses try to diss Catholicism on the basis of ignorant misundersandings or plain ignorance, Catholics laugh at them for a very good reason.
(Not a thing with me, because I actually know whereof I speak; better than most Catholics, actually)
Analogically, the way creationists try to mock evolution without actually knowing to what it refers.
(Interesting, that)
@65. John Morales : Thanks but what a load of waffle and self-contradictions that official dogma (literally) is.
Plus :
Emphasis & numbering added for clarity
(1) So by using the singular version of the word instead of the plural Catholics will just ignore the fact that they’re naming three separate (but also somehow one & the same!) thing?
(2) Mystery, mystery, mystery, all one big mystery to us but take our word for it, it is how it is even though it’s a mystery to us and we cannot therefore actually explain it! Or even try! Like we’re just gunna hand wave it away & pretend we’ve said something other than, Trinity, dunno, mysterious ways Gawdididit! (Well, Gawd is it actually..)
(3) The Trinity is the source of all other mysteries? Huh, like the mystery of why God couldn’t just forgive sin and had to have his son – who is also him – brutally killed as a sacrifice from himself to himself? The Trinity explains that? Relates to that huh? Or the mystery of why God couldn’t simply painlessly disappear the Canaanites or teleport them somewhere else and needed a genocide committed by the Israelites to get rid of them and ditto the whole Flood thing? Or the mystery of why the Catholic God supposedly provides a divine calling vocation to so many child molesters and rapists and yet is all knowing and all powerful but well, see first part of that? (Suffer the little children indeed!)
(4) That’s (the first origin of everything and transcendent authority and goodness and loving care for all his children ) NOT what the word father means and no it doesn’t automatically mean that. Ditto mother.
(5) God transcends the human distinction between the sexes is neither male nor female and that’s why we use masculine pronouns (pronouns! Gasp!) throughout pretty much all of this.. oh wait, wut?
I could go on and on and on with more too..
(4) That’s (the first origin of everything and transcendent authority and goodness and loving care for all his children) NOT what the word father means and no it doesn’t automatically mean that. Ditto mother.
(5) God transcends the human distinction between the sexes is neither male nor female and that’s why we use masculine pronouns (pronouns! Gasp!) throughout pretty much all of this.. oh wait, wut?
I could go on and on and on with more too..
StevoR, quite so.
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fideism
A sort of relative of the ontological argument that seems to be going on here is “Meinong’s Jungle,” named after a philosopher who asserted that anything that can be imagined has, through becoming a concept, acquired some kind of being, even if it is logically impossible for it to exist anywhere but in the imagination. So the jungle is the place in the universe where things that do not exist find their existence, in which reside such things as square circles and invisible pink unicorns. And I suppose then, that since one can imagine a god, such a god will be found there, and perhaps it is mean of us to begrudge him the solidity of his nonexistence. It is a quiet and exciting place, frantic with leisure, in which we can imagine the great Jehovah himself sitting down to a nice game of chess with the honest genius Donald Trump, and nobody cheats. It was an exciting game. Trump admitted defeat and eventually resigned. I saw it myself. It’s all true now.