Conserative Morality wrote:Constantinopolis wrote: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.
Anywhere Else But Here wrote:Constantinopolis wrote: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).
Anywhere Else But Here wrote: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.
Zoice wrote:Jochistan wrote: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.