The KGB Oracle Forums General Public Discussion (SPECIAL ACCESS) KGB Political Debate Central Make JetStar a believer... A Challenge

I base my atheism / agnosticism on a simple paradox. If you can explain it to me in a way that makes sense, I will adopt your religion.

I base my disbelief on the beneovlence vs omnipotence paradox. Let me explain:





God is supposed to be both benevolent and omnipotent, but if you look at history, he cannot be both.

Let's take the following event:



God being omnipotent (Being all poweful) let or made this happen. To say that he did not would say that he is not omnipotent, and therefore not godly or godlike.

So if God let or made this happen, then murdering 230,000 people by drowning and suffering can not be considered benevolent by any description of the word. Nor can sentencing beings to burn for eternity in fire (hell).

In conclusion, any god that exists today is neither benevolent or omnipotent, and thereby not a god or deserving of worship. For me 2+2=4.

Anyone willing to take up this challenge?

I do not believe in god..(something that controls everything)
I do believe that that our intelligent life do not end in a single lifespan..
I do not believe in "heaven" where is everyone to supose to live in peace just because we were good boys on earth...
I believe in some sort of life after this one..
Does not make sense to me, live a single life than go to "heaven" and be live happy forever..

However I believe your acts good or bad will make difference, I believe somehow that bad decisions and acts will be punished somehow..

So I believe in parts of budism,induism,christianism,spiritism..


Physicists have said that there could be the possibility of an infinite number of universes each with yourself but taking different decisions each time ..

What came before the Big Bang? would be that the universe expands and then shrinks infinitely?

You have the right to choose.. if that's not reason enough to believe then your lost

Um care to expand on that at all? Because I have the right to choose I should believe in God?

If you don't believe then why is it a problem? why do you care?

Have we gone that far as to say... " I don't believe what you believe, so you need to take down the cross that's in your front yard"

Our country is lost. Having rights is a great thing, UNLESS someone else's rights get in the way of yours.

It doesn't matter what I say, you're a non-believer I doubt I could say anything that would change your mind because your mind has already been made up. I don't go to church every sunday, I've not been to a church since I was 17 (besides weddings & funerals). Growing up my mother and grandmother has told stories from their spiritual experience's. If you like I can go through some of the stories I heard.

I can also tell you of one story of my own. But I doubt you would still change your stance. Ever see the show called "Beyond & Back"? The stories themselves aren't the part that makes you think, it's the part of how all of these stories are similar. But even those probably wouldn't change your mind. Believing isn't something you just go with, you have experiences that solidify that belief.

I don't hate on someone because they don't believe, or that they believe an alien flew into a volcano. That's your choice, so I ask again... why does it matter if you don't believe?

Interesting. As I have stated before, I am not certain of my belief on a "God"..I am certain that I believe in a higher power. One that drives ocurrences perhaps, or simply one that sits back and watchs us. I sometimes think "God" is more like Conan's "Crom", who sits back and watches and who does not give a shit..LOL.

Your true problem, as I perceive it Jet, is not really a matter of a God per se, your problem is one of religion. On that, shockingly, we both very much agree. Religion, as we know it, in all of it's varied forms, are useless extentions of various man made institutions designed to control men. They can all be laid at the feet of various rituals and belief systems before them, carrying symbols and other parts forward. I will more than gladly deate this with anyone as fact.

I will also debate any crotchery having to do withh scientific mumbo jumbo and evolution as the process by which man came about. The so called "big bang" from which all life spread must have been an instantaneous bang, as is proven by the existence of Granite and Polonium 218, a radioactive substance found within Granite. I can expound on that if you wish.

I would be willing to state that there is most probably a God, what his intentions for "man" are is as much a mystery to me as to most people. But to believe in the dogmatic stuff presented by almost all religions is simply an attempt to provide many people who have no purpose and who do not understand purpose, with some hope that when they leave this short life there is something to look forward to. I would be more inclined to believe we are descendants of alien beings, such as can be found in this article http://www.cyberspaceorbit.com/dm_report.html than I am in anything from religion.

So by your logic parents who allow any harm to come to their children are also not benevolent. If you're anything like me you learned much more when you got hurt than when you didn't so in reality, is the parent who hovers over their child and never lets them touch something hot, and thereby learn that lesson, more or less benevolent than the one who allows some accidents to happen so the child will be prepared for life?

While there are many events across the world that cause great loss of life, no one forced anyone to live in the path of natural disasters, so anyone who pays attention or has lived through one, like a hurricane, either assumes the responsibility for the risk they take or they leave that area.

If I had complete faith in the existence of God then I would argue that any direct interference would violate his promise to let us make our own decisions. When we get to make our own decisions then we have to be responsible for the ramifications of those decisions, no matter how sad that may make God.

Now your next question may be "how can prayer accomplish anything if God does not intervene?" Again, if I was confident in God's existence, I'd say that prayer is an exercise of your free will and by asking for God's intercession you give him a window through which he may act without violating his promise. How do you know that if people didn't pray every day for people all over the world that the disaster you posted wouldn't have killed many more people?

I think Helemoto accurately described the Christian Hell in a post in another thread. As understood by the Christian faiths, Hell is not a place of fire and brimstone, it is simply spending an eternity outside the presence of God. So, if you don't believe in God then what difference does it make? FYI the folks who preach fire and brimstone are usually the same charlatans that say you're going to burn if you don't send me $1,000...

*edit
I'm not trying to convert you or convince you of anything, since I don't even know what I believe. I just thought, based on my knowledge of Christianity and my limited ability to make logical arguments, I could help bounce your questions around.

Well said Kaotic..well said indeed. I like it.

It comes down to this: If we have free will, then God has a better than even chance of existing. Even Chaos is technically just systems too complex for our current understanding. So, if free will exists - it must be due to interface with forces that exist outside of understood physics. Otherwise, we have predestination.

While this in of itself does not prove that God exists, we can prove that, if we have free will - God CAN exist. If free will exists, we can also make a good case that there is some form of life after death - because for all we know whatever is pulling the strings on our meat puppet still exists after the puppet. In fact, lacking a co-dependant energy relationship, it is highly likely what whatever it is that pulls the strings on our meat puppet still exists after the puppet is gone.

If there is an interface between the unknown and our meat puppet , then it also stands to reason that historical cases of divine knowledge and precognition etc have a high possibility of being legit - at least in some instances. But the fact that a 2-way communication with the unknown is a requirement for free will opens all sorts of logical doors. At least if you believe in free will. If you don't believe in free will, it does not matter anyhow, because you are basically as dead as you will ever be from the moment you are born. Just more bits of matter traveling in a predetermined path, in which case nothing really matters anyway because there is nothing you can do about anything.

So, if we work from the basis of free will I posit that God is not only possible but likely.

Working from the basis of free will, you have your answer to why there are ills in the world and bad things happen to good people.

As far as evolution, and things like that go - I would say that the Old Testament is certainly not intended to be literal. Early man, and probably even modern man would not comprehend the details of something like the creation of the universe. There would also have been little point in God sharing those details.

In fact if we look at the etymology of the word "Day", we realise that God's use of the word day in the Old Testament by necessity must have been an abstraction. First of all, the concept of a day as humans understand it did not exist until after the Earth and the Sun were created.

Secondly and even more telling - the exact time it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun is NOT static. It changes. Therefore it is self-evident that God was not being literal in the Old Testament when explaining how things were made. It had to have been made so the people at the time could understand it.

From that, it is logical to conclude that science as we understand it does not conflict at all with what our historical perception of God should be. The world was obviously not created in seven days as humans know them, but since it is easily proven that God was not being literal there is no conflict between religion and science.

Also, Got created the universe in several stages, and then rested. This means that he is not literally omnipotent in the strictest sense, though could be considered so for practical purposes.

There is plenty of anecdotal evident throughout history to support the existence of a higher power. Once you take a few minutes and logically sort out early religious works, it is also evident that they were not intended to be literal, it was intended as metaphor so God did not fry puny cave-people brain with concepts they could not understand, and would have no immediate use if they did.

Now, as for evolution. It is pretty obvious that God could predict the end result of creating a particular environment. God used the Big Bang ( or however our current universe got started ) as the initial condition, with a predicted path of motion that led to the development of life and of humans. Seems pretty simple to me, though actually doing it was certainly very complex. Difficult enough than an omnipotent being/force has to rest afterwords even.

A good analogy would be the break in a game of pool. A good player can position the balls off the break. God can apparently take a glob of super compressed reality and position stars, planets, etc and load them with the stuff of life. Neat trick.

The idea that God would, or would need to go outside his own laws of physics to accomplish his will was always a mystery to me. So many people think that if it does not break the apparent laws of physics that it is not mystical or divine. What horseshit. The universe only exists as a constant because the laws are constant. If the laws were not constant, there would not be a universe. There would have been no reason God would need to go outside the established means of accomplishing change in his own universe to work his will. The idea that he would need to is silly.

Proving without doubt that God exists may not be possible. Proving that the commonly held objections to either God or Science not existing is a trivial matter. Making a case that God is very likely to exist is pretty simple. At least if free will exists. And if it doesn't, then it doesn't matter anyway.

Another rational and exceptional arguement. Well said as well Derid.