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Posted: Sun Jul 29, 2007 10:09 am
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Posted: Sun Jul 29, 2007 12:40 pm
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Posted: Sun Jul 29, 2007 1:25 pm
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Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 11:48 am
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Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 1:59 pm
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Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 10:36 am
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Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 1:36 am
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Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 4:16 am
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[x] Natasha [x] I shall steal a counter-arguement from my best friend (who just happens to be an extremely religious Christian) "God has reasons for doing things which we cannot possibly understand. He created us and therefore must have reasoning far beyond our human understanding." That's usually her argument when I start debating with her about stuff. To be fair, it's a pretty good argument.
No, it's a terrible argument.
If a person is going to debate with you and hope to mean anything with their points, there must be agreed upon rules, namely the rules that only facts and testable information will be used. When a person invokes the mystery of God, they're simply saying, "nobody can debate me, as I refuse to bring logic into the matter."
The problem with that is that we are logical beings in a world of provable items and expressible thoughts. The person who says that God is mysterious is hedging their bets; if one were to apply, to truly apply the same logic of "you can't understand God, so you can't not understand God!" is the one who must alos be agnostic about the Tooth Fairy, Invisible Pink Unicorn and Flying Spaghetti Monster.
To truly apply that belief system would require fealty to Wotan, Kali Durga and Huitzilopochtli.
And obviously your friend doesn't do that?
What that argument tries to do is put the responsibility on the skeptic, telling them that logic and rational approaches aren't good enough. The skeptic, however, is not the person making a ridiculous claim of unknowable, supernatural explanations.
Let me sum it up like this and give you a nice tool to use the next time someone invokes God's mystery. "If God is unknowable, then how do you know he's unknowable?"
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Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 4:24 am
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Theophrastus [x] Natasha [x] I shall steal a counter-arguement from my best friend (who just happens to be an extremely religious Christian) "God has reasons for doing things which we cannot possibly understand. He created us and therefore must have reasoning far beyond our human understanding." That's usually her argument when I start debating with her about stuff. To be fair, it's a pretty good argument. No, it's a terrible argument. If a person is going to debate with you and hope to mean anything with their points, there must be agreed upon rules, namely the rules that only facts and testable information will be used. When a person invokes the mystery of God, they're simply saying, "nobody can debate me, as I refuse to bring logic into the matter." The problem with that is that we are logical beings in a world of provable items and expressible thoughts. The person who says that God is mysterious is hedging their bets; if one were to apply, to truly apply the same logic of "you can't understand God, so you can't not understand God!" is the one who must alos be agnostic about the Tooth Fairy, Invisible Pink Unicorn and Flying Spaghetti Monster. To truly apply that belief system would require fealty to Wotan, Kali Durga and Huitzilopochtli. And obviously your friend doesn't do that? What that argument tries to do is put the responsibility on the skeptic, telling them that logic and rational approaches aren't good enough. The skeptic, however, is not the person making a ridiculous claim of unknowable, supernatural explanations. Let me sum it up like this and give you a nice tool to use the next time someone invokes God's mystery. "If God is unknowable, then how do you know he's unknowable?"
I hadn't looked at it that way...but I'm afraid that there will be rather a lot less debates between me and my friend partly because neither of us are taking RS next year.
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Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 6:40 pm
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Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 7:13 pm
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SkeletonPhoenix I can't believe I'm going to post this but here goes nothing... Really. Here is a counter arguement that I thought up. But god can see the future even if he interfers because if he is truly omniscient then he can see every timeline and every reality with every out come. This just happens to be one of the timelines. I bet you a cristian would never think of this arguement. Also please find the faults in this before I lose it and become... Christian Nooooooooo.
Reading "The God Delusion" a bit recently has expanded my repertoire of counter-counter-arguments.
If God can see the future, he's omniscient...but if he can see the future, he must know what he's going to do in the future. If the timeline yet to come is immutable, and God can't change his mind about the action he knows he is going to take, then he's not omnipotent, and either does not exist, or does not deserve to be called God.
Thank you, Dr. Dawkins. smile
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Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 7:31 pm
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Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 9:02 pm
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Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 6:58 pm
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