Anglican church against gay marriage

[Jochistan]

Scientific evidence does not favor Atheism rather than Theism. That's just ridiculous.

It's not done nothing in that time at all. The Catholic Church, The Islamic World and Hindu India havevled the world in scientific achievement in the past.

Religion doesn't remain stagnant.

Scientists living in the religious world =/= Religion discovering things.

Science absolutely favours atheism. Every time that religions make a specific claim or prediction about the world it's proven wrong by science. Religions have no predictive value and they are scientifically useless. Less than useless, even harmful because they'll lead you to the wrong conclusion if you believe them.

Religious scientists living in a religious world that not only alliwed but fostered such revolutionary thinking absolutely has to do with religion.

As for your other point, you seem to thing Science and religion exist in the same ballpark. Which is naive at best. You also seem to think believing in a religion makes you a literalist. Which is dangerous at best.

[SD_Film Artists]

I'm late to the thread, but I'll say it anyway..



Is the Catholic church really a safe harbour from homophobia? If anything I thought they were more homophobic than the Anglican church.

Apparently there's a secret network of gay priests in the Catholic Church, if the leaked papers of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis's own statement are to be believed.

Sounds like a perfect Dan Brown plot..

[Uxupox]

Scientific evidence does not favor Atheism rather than Theism. That's just ridiculous.

It's not done nothing in that time at all. The Catholic Church, The Islamic World and Hindu India havevled the world in scientific achievement in the past.

Religion doesn't remain stagnant.

Scientists living in the religious world =/= Religion discovering things.

Science absolutely favours atheism. Every time that religions make a specific claim or prediction about the world it's proven wrong by science. Religions have no predictive value and they are scientifically useless. Less than useless, even harmful because they'll lead you to the wrong conclusion if you believe them.

That's bullshit. Science doesn't favor anything either that being a religion or lack thereof.

[Zoice]

Scientists living in the religious world =/= Religion discovering things.

Science absolutely favours atheism. Every time that religions make a specific claim or prediction about the world it's proven wrong by science. Religions have no predictive value and they are scientifically useless. Less than useless, even harmful because they'll lead you to the wrong conclusion if you believe them.

Religious scientists living in a religious world that not only alliwed but fostered such revolutionary thinking absolutely has to do with religion.

As for your other point, you seem to thing Science and religion exist in the same ballpark. Which is naive at best. You also seem to think believing in a religion makes you a literalist. Which is dangerous at best.

Religion and science do exist in the same ballpark. They're not even the same damn sport, but they do exist in the same ballpark. That ballpark is "claims about the world, and methods for discovering which claims are true". In this ballpark, religion falls flat on its face next to science.

No, not all religious people are literalists. That's good, literalists believe more false things than moderately religious people do.

Religion at its heart relies on authority of people. Science relies on the authority of evidence.

[Jochistan]

Religious scientists living in a religious world that not only alliwed but fostered such revolutionary thinking absolutely has to do with religion.

As for your other point, you seem to thing Science and religion exist in the same ballpark. Which is naive at best. You also seem to think believing in a religion makes you a literalist. Which is dangerous at best.

Religion and science do exist in the same ballpark. They're not even the same damn sport, but they do exist in the same ballpark. That ballpark is "claims about the world, and methods for discovering which claims are true". In this ballpark, religion falls flat on its face next to science.

No, not all religious people are literalists. That's good, literalists believe more false things than moderately religious people do.

Religion at its heart relies on authority of people. Science relies on the authority of evidence.

Religious claims about the world exist as concepts much different than and often non contradictory to science.

[Constantinopolis]

You're missing the point. The issue (at this stage) is not whether the claims are fully accurate, it's whether the objects of those claims exist or not.

In other words, to use your example: If someone claims gold is an amazing and sound investment, and another person claims the one true investment opportunity is oil, I may not believe their claims about which commodity is better, but that doesn't mean I have to conclude that gold and oil don't exist, or that investment doesn't exist.

If someone I trust, with no history of hallucinations, claims that a djinn visited them and performed supernatural actions in their presence, I may not believe that the entity they saw was a djinn, but I will be inclined to believe that they did indeed see something supernatural.

As someone who had no history of hallucinations for the longest time, I assure you, that's not really a safe assumption to make.

Are you inclined to believe that those who claim alien abduction were visited by some sort of extraterrestrial beings?

No, but I am inclined to believe that some of them may have been visited by beings of some kind.

No. We're talking about two separate issues.

Issue 1: God could take away the ability of human beings to think about doing evil, but that would mean taking away free will.

Issue 2: God could act as a celestial policeman, NOT taking away free will, but simply acting like a supernatural and infallible version of human police authorities - miraculously transporting evildoers to some kind of inescapable prison, for example, smiting armies with bolts of lightning to stop wars, and so on. Then, people would still have free will - they would still be in control of their minds, which is what free will means - but God would police their actions. The problem with THIS is that God would effectively become a supernatural world dictator. Humans would no longer be in control of their own history, of their own development as a species. God would be the state, and a totalitarian state at that.

I highly doubt that any atheist would really want either of these two scenarios to happen, assuming you were given the option to make them happen. Conserative Morality has already said that he would refuse to press a button that would remove the ability of human beings to think about doing evil. Now, imagine that a sufficiently advanced alien civilization made contact with us and offered to police the world in the way you asked for God to police the world. Would you accept their offer?

For someone who believes in a supernatural being you seem startlingly unimaginative. Firstly, I'll repeat that enforcing the law is not the same as being the state. You know this, you just refuse to acknowledge it.

Why couldn't God police the world according to our morals?

Which morals are those? Would you have wanted God to police the world according to the prevailing morals of, say, the 1600s? Or those of the Victorian era? Or those of the 1950s?

"Our" morals - meaning the morals accepted by most people in the society you live in - are constantly changing. And I'm sure you believe that most of the prevailing morals in most societies for most of human history were abhorrent and wrong.

So, what is God to do, then? Police the world according to whatever people believe to be good and evil at the time, and look like a monster to other people living in other historical periods? Or impose His own true code of morality on all people throughout all the ages, and get called an oppressive tyrant by everyone who doesn't like His morals (including, presumably, you)?

Gosh, it's almost as if you've created a catch-22 situation in which you can always find reasons to hate God no matter what He does (or doesn't do).

Or he could just prevent the very worst crimes, the ones basically everyone can agree are wrong. Murder, genocide, standing on the left on escalators.

We'd still be largely in control of our history, all we'd really be doing is creating a very efficient police force and UN.

The worst kinds of murder are called war and genocide. In order to prevent war and genocide, God would have to take direct control of human history. What would human civilization even look like if we had an all-seeing Sky Cop zapping anyone who tried to go to war for the past 5000 years? I have no idea, but I can tell you that we wouldn't be able to recognize it.

I also suspect that without war, conflict, and many other kinds of suffering, we would have never developed any of the science and technology we have today. Make of that what you will.

Scientific evidence does not favor Atheism rather than Theism. That's just ridiculous.

It's not done nothing in that time at all. The Catholic Church, The Islamic World and Hindu India havevled the world in scientific achievement in the past.

Religion doesn't remain stagnant.

Scientists living in the religious world =/= Religion discovering things.

Science absolutely favours atheism. Every time that religions make a specific claim or prediction about the world it's proven wrong by science. Religions have no predictive value and they are scientifically useless. Less than useless, even harmful because they'll lead you to the wrong conclusion if you believe them.

Let me introduce you to Georges Lemaître, the author of a little something called the "Big Bang Theory". He was a Catholic priest.

[Constantinopolis]

Religion and science do exist in the same ballpark. They're not even the same damn sport, but they do exist in the same ballpark. That ballpark is "claims about the world, and methods for discovering which claims are true".

Bzzzzzt. Wrong.

Religions generally make very few claims about the world, meaning the physical, observable universe. Most religious claims are about things such as the nature of good and evil, the purpose of life, and events that are believed to be happening in other universes (such as Heaven and Hell).

[Anywhere Else But Here]

For someone who believes in a supernatural being you seem startlingly unimaginative. Firstly, I'll repeat that enforcing the law is not the same as being the state. You know this, you just refuse to acknowledge it.

Why couldn't God police the world according to our morals?

Which morals are those? Would you have wanted God to police the world according to the prevailing morals of, say, the 1600s? Or those of the Victorian era? Or those of the 1950s?

"Our" morals - meaning the morals accepted by most people in the society you live in - are constantly changing. And I'm sure you believe that most of the prevailing morals in most societies for most of human history were abhorrent and wrong.

So, what is God to do, then? Police the world according to whatever people believe to be good and evil at the time, and look like a monster to other people living in other historical periods? Or impose His own true code of morality on all people throughout all the ages, and get called an oppressive tyrant by everyone who doesn't like His morals (including, presumably, you)?

Gosh, it's almost as if you've created a catch-22 situation in which you can always find reasons to hate God no matter what He does (or doesn't do).

Or he could just prevent the very worst crimes, the ones basically everyone can agree are wrong. Murder, genocide, standing on the left on escalators.

We'd still be largely in control of our history, all we'd really be doing is creating a very efficient police force and UN.

The worst kinds of murder are called war and genocide. In order to prevent war and genocide, God would have to take direct control of human history. What would human civilization even look like if we had an all-seeing Sky Cop zapping anyone who tried to go to war for the past 5000 years? I have no idea, but I can tell you that we wouldn't be able to recognize it.

I also suspect that without war, conflict, and many other kinds of suffering, we would have never developed any of the science and technology we have today. Make of that what you will.

"Police" would suggest that he'd go by the morality/law of the time and place, yes. Which is why I suggested Go might only prevent the most heinous crimes (you know, the kind he endorsed in the OT). Would you consider a police force that has a 100% success rate at preventing murder to be taking away free will?

EDIT:
Also, why would it be an unacceptable control of human history for God to make Hitler just a little bit better with a paintbrush, when (I assume) you're fine with him tearing down the walls of Jericho so the Israelites could slaughter the populace? How is the latter ethical, when the former is not?

[Zoice]

As someone who had no history of hallucinations for the longest time, I assure you, that's not really a safe assumption to make.

Are you inclined to believe that those who claim alien abduction were visited by some sort of extraterrestrial beings?

No, but I am inclined to believe that some of them may have been visited by beings of some kind.

For someone who believes in a supernatural being you seem startlingly unimaginative. Firstly, I'll repeat that enforcing the law is not the same as being the state. You know this, you just refuse to acknowledge it.

Why couldn't God police the world according to our morals?

Which morals are those? Would you have wanted God to police the world according to the prevailing morals of, say, the 1600s? Or those of the Victorian era? Or those of the 1950s?

"Our" morals - meaning the morals accepted by most people in the society you live in - are constantly changing. And I'm sure you believe that most of the prevailing morals in most societies for most of human history were abhorrent and wrong.

So, what is God to do, then? Police the world according to whatever people believe to be good and evil at the time, and look like a monster to other people living in other historical periods? Or impose His own true code of morality on all people throughout all the ages, and get called an oppressive tyrant by everyone who doesn't like His morals (including, presumably, you)?

Gosh, it's almost as if you've created a catch-22 situation in which you can always find reasons to hate God no matter what He does (or doesn't do).

Or he could just prevent the very worst crimes, the ones basically everyone can agree are wrong. Murder, genocide, standing on the left on escalators.

We'd still be largely in control of our history, all we'd really be doing is creating a very efficient police force and UN.

The worst kinds of murder are called war and genocide. In order to prevent war and genocide, God would have to take direct control of human history. What would human civilization even look like if we had an all-seeing Sky Cop zapping anyone who tried to go to war for the past 5000 years? I have no idea, but I can tell you that we wouldn't be able to recognize it.

I also suspect that without war, conflict, and many other kinds of suffering, we would have never developed any of the science and technology we have today. Make of that what you will.

Scientists living in the religious world =/= Religion discovering things.

Science absolutely favours atheism. Every time that religions make a specific claim or prediction about the world it's proven wrong by science. Religions have no predictive value and they are scientifically useless. Less than useless, even harmful because they'll lead you to the wrong conclusion if you believe them.

Let me introduce you to Georges Lemaître, the author of a little something called the "Big Bang Theory". He was a Catholic priest.

I'm very aware of Georgie Lemaître. And... so what? He was a priest and a scientist. Catholicism did not discover anything, science did.

Religion and science do exist in the same ballpark. They're not even the same damn sport, but they do exist in the same ballpark. That ballpark is "claims about the world, and methods for discovering which claims are true".

Bzzzzzt. Wrong.

Religions generally make very few claims about the world, meaning the physical, observable universe. Most religious claims are about things such as the nature of good and evil, the purpose of life, and events that are believed to be happening in other universes (such as Heaven and Hell).

Those are claims of facts. Either there is or there is not a heaven. Same for hell. They are claims of facts, and they need to have support - support that they do not have.

Religion and science do exist in the same ballpark. They're not even the same damn sport, but they do exist in the same ballpark. That ballpark is "claims about the world, and methods for discovering which claims are true". In this ballpark, religion falls flat on its face next to science.

No, not all religious people are literalists. That's good, literalists believe more false things than moderately religious people do.

Religion at its heart relies on authority of people. Science relies on the authority of evidence.

Religious claims about the world exist as concepts much different than and often non contradictory to science.

What religious claim is not contradictory to science? There's the claims of miracles, which without exception are bogus events that have no good evidence. There's unfounded assertions such as the existence of the soul, which science is steadfastly against. What religious idea isn't scientifically false? There's probably a few, but a stopped clock is right twice a day - religion is only ever right by chance or because the answer is blazingly obvious (even then it fails sometimes, e.g. slavery, homophobia).

[Constantinopolis]

"Police" would suggest that he'd go by the morality/law of the time and place, yes. Which is why I suggested Go might only prevent the most heinous crimes (you know, the kind he endorsed in the OT).

Problem: Those were not seen as crimes by the people living at the time. A god enforcing the morality of the time and place would not stop them.

In fact, many things that we now consider to be "the most heinous crimes" - including murder (as revenge for dishonour), rape (of the women from an enemy tribe/nation), and genocide (of an enemy tribe/nation) - were considered totally fine by many societies throughout most of human history.

Would you consider a police force that has a 100% success rate at preventing murder to be taking away free will?

No, but if we're including war and genocide under the category of "murder", then a police force that has a 100% success rate at preventing "murder" is an organization that acts as a World Government.

Bzzzzzt. Wrong.

Religions generally make very few claims about the world, meaning the physical, observable universe. Most religious claims are about things such as the nature of good and evil, the purpose of life, and events that are believed to be happening in other universes (such as Heaven and Hell).

Those are claims of facts. Either there is or there is not a heaven. Same for hell. They are claims of facts, and they need to have support - support that they do not have.

Claims about good, evil, or the purpose of life, are not claims about facts. They are philosophical claims.

And claims about Heaven and Hell are claims about facts in other universes, which are unobservable by definition.

Let me introduce you to Georges Lemaître, the author of a little something called the "Big Bang Theory". He was a Catholic priest.

(Image)

I'm very aware of Georgie Lemaître. And... so what? He was a priest and a scientist. Catholicism did not discover anything, science did.

The point is, your claims that religion is in conflict with science are wrong. Lemaître and his theory of the Big Bang represent the most outstanding 20th century example of how religion and science are perfectly compatible.

More than compatible, in fact. Because Lemaître was inspired by the Christian idea that the universe had a beginning, at a time when most atheist scientists firmly believed that the universe had always existed, and did not have a beginning.

[Anywhere Else But Here]

Would you consider a police force that has a 100% success rate at preventing murder to be taking away free will?

No, but if we're including war and genocide under the category of "murder", then a police force that has a 100% success rate at preventing "murder" is an organization that acts as a World Government.

So you're saying that the UN is just an ineffective world government?

I think you might have missed my edit, so here it is again:

Also, why would it be an unacceptable control of human history for God to make Hitler just a little bit better with a paintbrush, when (I assume) you're fine with him tearing down the walls of Jericho so the Israelites could slaughter the populace? How is the latter ethical, when the former is not?

[Constantinopolis]

No, but if we're including war and genocide under the category of "murder", then a police force that has a 100% success rate at preventing "murder" is an organization that acts as a World Government.

So you're saying that the UN is just an ineffective world government?

Yes. A very, very, very ineffective one.

Also, the UN technically cannot enforce anything on its own. The UN does not have its own army. It depends on member states to provide the means to enforce things.

[Conserative Morality]

No, but I am inclined to believe that some of them may have been visited by beings of some kind.

I suppose that's where we differ. As a person who's had dreams, nightmares, hallucinations, delusions, tricks of the light, and weird coincidences, I'm rather inclined to disbelieve in things like mythical animals, alien abductions, and supernatural events without proof other than a witness. People can be silly, fooled, paranoid, liars, and jump to conclusions.

[Constantinopolis]

I think you might have missed my edit, so here it is again:

Also, why would it be an unacceptable control of human history for God to make Hitler just a little bit better with a paintbrush, when (I assume) you're fine with him tearing down the walls of Jericho so the Israelites could slaughter the populace? How is the latter ethical, when the former is not?

I did miss your edit, so I will respond to this now.

Simply making Hitler better with a paintbrush - or even just outright smiting him with a bolt of lightning while he was still a teenager - would be perfectly fine and acceptable. The question is, how do you know that would have made things better instead of worse? Humanity was clearly headed for a Second World War after the first one. Without Hitler, history would have been different, but I am absolutely sure that some kind of global war would have happened anyway in the 1940s or 50s.

In fact, did you notice how narrowly Humanity escaped global nuclear war in the 20th century? My personal theory is that if the course of history had gone any other way, the Earth would be a radioactive ruin today. World War II happened at almost the perfect time, and in the perfect way, so as to ensure that we got to see the full devastating potential of nuclear weapons in action, but at the end of a global war, causing us to recoil in horror and decide never to use them again. If nuclear weapons had been invented before or in the middle of a global war... then...

[Anywhere Else But Here]

I think you might have missed my edit, so here it is again:

Also, why would it be an unacceptable control of human history for God to make Hitler just a little bit better with a paintbrush, when (I assume) you're fine with him tearing down the walls of Jericho so the Israelites could slaughter the populace? How is the latter ethical, when the former is not?

I did miss your edit, so I will respond to this now.

Simply making Hitler better with a paintbrush - or even just outright smiting him with a bolt of lightning while he was still a teenager - would be perfectly fine and acceptable. The question is, how do you know that would have made things better instead of worse? Humanity was clearly headed for a Second World War after the first one. Without Hitler, history would have been different, but I am absolutely sure that some kind of global war would have happened anyway in the 1940s or 50s.

In fact, did you notice how narrowly Humanity escaped global nuclear war in the 20th century? My personal theory is that if the course of history had gone any other way, the Earth would be a radioactive ruin today. World War II happened at almost the perfect time, and in the perfect way, so as to ensure that we got to see the full devastating potential of nuclear weapons in action, but at the end of a global war, causing us to recoil in horror and decide never to use them again. If nuclear wars had been invented before or in the middle of a global war... then...

Ah, so this is this the best of all possible worlds?

[Zoice]

Those are claims of facts. Either there is or there is not a heaven. Same for hell. They are claims of facts, and they need to have support - support that they do not have.

Claims about good, evil, or the purpose of life, are not claims about facts. They are philosophical claims.

And claims about Heaven and Hell are claims about facts in other universes, which are unobservable by definition.

They are claims, and they have to be tied to our universe somehow. I'll try to explain why, if they are not based on some evidence, or some fact that we can solidly (or as solidly as we can know anything, shoo, solipsists, shoo!) know to be true, then they are not applicable to our universe, our life, and there's no reason to give them any notice.

In the Star Wars universe, we can philosophize about the nature of the Force, and whether the Dark Side is truly evil, or perhaps it is only misused often by evil force sensitives. But the fact is that Star Wars is a fictional universe, and unless we use science to discover midichlorians in the real world, or some space-archaeologists discover the tombs of Korriban on Mars, there's no reason to apply the conclusions we reach through the "Star Wars framework" to the real world. We need to ground our philosophy in the real world, that's what religions need to do, and fail to do.

I'm very aware of Georgie Lemaître. And... so what? He was a priest and a scientist. Catholicism did not discover anything, science did.

The point is, your claims that religion is in conflict with science are wrong. Lemaître and his theory of the Big Bang represent the most outstanding 20th century example of how religion and science are perfectly compatible.

More than compatible, in fact. Because Lemaître was inspired by the Christian idea that the universe had a beginning, at a time when most atheist scientists firmly believed that the universe had always existed, and did not have a beginning.

The scientific evidence at the time showed that the universe was static. Christianity happened to be right by accident, in that the universe as we know it does seem to have had a beginning, or at least some big event 13.7 billion years ago. Zoroastrianism was also "right" in saying that the universe had a beginning. Then we found more evidence, and we found that the universe was not static. That's a story of how awesome science is for correcting itself, not religion's compatibility with science.

[Constantinopolis]

I did miss your edit, so I will respond to this now.

Simply making Hitler better with a paintbrush - or even just outright smiting him with a bolt of lightning while he was still a teenager - would be perfectly fine and acceptable. The question is, how do you know that would have made things better instead of worse? Humanity was clearly headed for a Second World War after the first one. Without Hitler, history would have been different, but I am absolutely sure that some kind of global war would have happened anyway in the 1940s or 50s.

In fact, did you notice how narrowly Humanity escaped global nuclear war in the 20th century? My personal theory is that if the course of history had gone any other way, the Earth would be a radioactive ruin today. World War II happened at almost the perfect time, and in the perfect way, so as to ensure that we got to see the full devastating potential of nuclear weapons in action, but at the end of a global war, causing us to recoil in horror and decide never to use them again. If nuclear wars had been invented before or in the middle of a global war... then...

Ah, so this is this the best of all possible worlds?

That's not what I said.

I said that maybe the World War II that we had was the least bad of all possible wars that could have happened in the mid-20th century. And God, knowing this, did not kill Hitler.

[Anywhere Else But Here]

Ah, so this is this the best of all possible worlds?

That's not what I said.

I said that maybe the World War II that we had was the least bad of all possible wars that could have happened in the mid-20th century. And God, knowing this, did not kill Hitler.

So he would have interfered if it had been for the best? So your position has shifted from "God does not interfere because free will." to "God selectively does and doesn't interfere to create the best possible outcome"?

Or would God have permitted WW2 even if it would have lead to annihilation?

[Constantinopolis]

No, but I am inclined to believe that some of them may have been visited by beings of some kind.

I suppose that's where we differ. As a person who's had dreams, nightmares, hallucinations, delusions, tricks of the light, and weird coincidences, I'm rather inclined to disbelieve in things like mythical animals, alien abductions, and supernatural events without proof other than a witness. People can be silly, fooled, paranoid, liars, and jump to conclusions.

People can be wrong, yes. But the fact that people are sometimes wrong is not sufficient evidence to jump to the conclusion that people are always wrong when reporting supernatural events.

If even a single eyewitness report out of millions was not false, that means the supernatural exists.

We know that eyewitnesses are unreliable. But, as far as I'm aware, no justice system in the world operates under the assumption that all eyewitnesses are always fools or liars until overwhelming evidence is provided to the contrary.

[Conserative Morality]

People can be wrong, yes. But the fact that people are sometimes wrong is not sufficient evidence to jump to the conclusion that people are always wrong when reporting supernatural events.

If even a single eyewitness report out of millions was not false, that means the supernatural exists.

Yes, and if even a single eyewitness report of Jewish blood libel out of all the times it was reported or supposedly observed was true, that means that blood libel actually happened.

But it didn't, because it contradicts known facts, claims of individuals be damned.

We know that eyewitnesses are unreliable. But, as far as I'm aware, no justice system in the world operates under the assumption that all eyewitnesses are always fools or liars until overwhelming evidence is provided to the contrary.

Court systems are becoming less reliant on witnesses for a reason - people see what they want to see and remember what they want to remember.

Really, consider every work of art that pulls a Rashomon. The stories change, people see different things, come to different conclusions, events occur in one that did not in another... etc etc.

[Zoice]

I suppose that's where we differ. As a person who's had dreams, nightmares, hallucinations, delusions, tricks of the light, and weird coincidences, I'm rather inclined to disbelieve in things like mythical animals, alien abductions, and supernatural events without proof other than a witness. People can be silly, fooled, paranoid, liars, and jump to conclusions.

People can be wrong, yes. But the fact that people are sometimes wrong is not sufficient evidence to jump to the conclusion that people are always wrong when reporting supernatural events.

If even a single eyewitness report out of millions was not false, that means the supernatural exists.

We know that eyewitnesses are unreliable. But, as far as I'm aware, no justice system in the world operates under the assumption that all eyewitnesses are always fools or liars until overwhelming evidence is provided to the contrary.

There are a lot of phenomena that can lead to alleged sightings of the supernatural. I don't think you appreciate how fallible people are, and how willing they can be to set aside their critical thinking and curiosity for what the truth actually is.

[Constantinopolis]

That's not what I said.

I said that maybe the World War II that we had was the least bad of all possible wars that could have happened in the mid-20th century. And God, knowing this, did not kill Hitler.

So he would have interfered if it had been for the best? So your position has shifted from "God does not interfere because free will." to "God selectively does and doesn't interfere to create the best possible outcome"?

My position has always been that the free will issue is a completely separate thing from the God-as-Sky-Cop issue:

We're talking about two separate issues.

Issue 1: God could take away the ability of human beings to think about doing evil, but that would mean taking away free will.

Issue 2: God could act as a celestial policeman, NOT taking away free will, but simply acting like a supernatural and infallible version of human police authorities - miraculously transporting evildoers to some kind of inescapable prison, for example, smiting armies with bolts of lightning to stop wars, and so on. Then, people would still have free will - they would still be in control of their minds, which is what free will means - but God would police their actions. The problem with THIS is that God would effectively become a supernatural world dictator. Humans would no longer be in control of their own history, of their own development as a species. God would be the state, and a totalitarian state at that.

I highly doubt that any atheist would really want either of these two scenarios to happen, assuming you were given the option to make them happen. Conserative Morality has already said that he would refuse to press a button that would remove the ability of human beings to think about doing evil. Now, imagine that a sufficiently advanced alien civilization made contact with us and offered to police the world in the way you asked for God to police the world. Would you accept their offer?

The fact that you brought up free will as if that was still the topic shows me that you are not even paying attention.

And to be clear: No, my position is not that "God selectively does and doesn't interfere to create the best possible outcome". I make no claims at all about God's reasons for interfering or not interfering. I am only making the claim that you have no grounds on which to criticize God for failing to act as Sky Cop.

[Conserative Morality]

And to be clear: No, my position is not that "God selectively does and doesn't interfere to create the best possible outcome". I make no claims at all about God's reasons for interfering or not interfering. I am only making the claim that you have no grounds on which to criticize God for failing to act as Sky Cop.

Because MAYBE without any evidence things could have been worse because "God works in mysterious ways"?

Nah, not that convincing.

[Constantinopolis]

People can be wrong, yes. But the fact that people are sometimes wrong is not sufficient evidence to jump to the conclusion that people are always wrong when reporting supernatural events.

If even a single eyewitness report out of millions was not false, that means the supernatural exists.

Yes, and if even a single eyewitness report of Jewish blood libel out of all the times it was reported or supposedly observed was true, that means that blood libel actually happened.

You're comparing apples to oranges. "The supernatural" is a FAR broader category than "the blood libel".

I specifically said, NUMEROUS times, that eyewitness reports of supernatural events cannot prove by themselves that any specific religion is true or that any specific type of miracle definitely happened, but that they prove that some kinds of supernatural events sometimes happen.

Stop trying to make my claims seem stronger than they actually are so that you can knock them down.

[Anywhere Else But Here]

So he would have interfered if it had been for the best? So your position has shifted from "God does not interfere because free will." to "God selectively does and doesn't interfere to create the best possible outcome"?

My position has always been that the free will issue is a completely separate thing from the God-as-Sky-Cop issue:

We're talking about two separate issues.

Issue 1: God could take away the ability of human beings to think about doing evil, but that would mean taking away free will.

Issue 2: God could act as a celestial policeman, NOT taking away free will, but simply acting like a supernatural and infallible version of human police authorities - miraculously transporting evildoers to some kind of inescapable prison, for example, smiting armies with bolts of lightning to stop wars, and so on. Then, people would still have free will - they would still be in control of their minds, which is what free will means - but God would police their actions. The problem with THIS is that God would effectively become a supernatural world dictator. Humans would no longer be in control of their own history, of their own development as a species. God would be the state, and a totalitarian state at that.

I highly doubt that any atheist would really want either of these two scenarios to happen, assuming you were given the option to make them happen. Conserative Morality has already said that he would refuse to press a button that would remove the ability of human beings to think about doing evil. Now, imagine that a sufficiently advanced alien civilization made contact with us and offered to police the world in the way you asked for God to police the world. Would you accept their offer?

The fact that you brought up free will as if that was still the topic shows me that you are not even paying attention.

And to be clear: No, my position is not that "God selectively does and doesn't interfere to create the best possible outcome". I make no claims at all about God's reasons for interfering or not interfering. I am only making the claim that you have no grounds on which to criticize God for failing to act as Sky Cop.

My mistake on free will. But you just suggested that God would have acted as sky cop if WW2 had not been the best possible war.

And as for grounds for criticising God for failing to act as sky cop, yes I have plenty of fucking ground. If you can save a child from being raped at no risk to yourself, or indeed anyone else, and you choose not to, you cannot claim to be benevolent.