Atheists - prove it.

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........... Everything He created was deemed, "very good", not mediocre, not even just sufficient. God appeared to be pleased with everything He made. After the Original Sin, punishment was to be driven from the garden, which then had guards placed around it (why protect it if it wasn't so special), work for food, and man suddenly had mortality. Sounds to me like they started out with a pretty perfect set up.

Good, yes, and even very good, but "perfect", I believe, is a Sunday School fabrication (even if ideologically defensible).

A perfect world is where one does not have to work for food? That explains it. This is a perfect world for rabbits which eat grass which is everywhere. There is no indication what Adam ate and even lions ate grass then, so it seems Adam ate grass too. But when he developed an appetite for apples, there were problems.

The disproof is of the possiblity of moral perfection, at least moral perfection for a creator God. Actually, the problem isn't that "God can't do the logically impossible", it's that a better possible being is logically possible for any creational act, which, is sufficient to disprove the idea.


Given that the problem of evil is contingent upon God's existence, and standard theism has certain moral characteristics, usually which are taken to agree somewhat with commonsense morality(since most theisms don't attempt wholesale replacement), no begging the question of objective morality occurs. The problem is that theism's truth with theism's characteristics does not work.


No, viability is different than parsimony. Viable, in this context, means possible. Parsimonous means parsimonious.

Secondly....... naturalism is not supportable without naturalism? Um.... M_P doesn't have to prove that all facts are compatible with a theory in order to say a theory is the best. That would be an impossible task for ANY theory to do, as there are too many facts in existence to identify. Instead, it just has to be defended.


91, the problem you get at is logical. The issue I'm pointing to is epistemic. Source matters for the reliability of beliefs, as frankly, source is one of our major points of discrimination. If you don't recognize that, then... how could have passed grade school?

Y'know, it wasn't really earlier where I lived either.

What a ridiculous claim. A being can be morally perfect without requiring it to do the logically impossible. This is the old God and the rock so heavy even he could not lift it argument and no matter how you dress it up it still fails. This is just atheism at any cost rambling.



Yes, it does assume the existence of God... this line of argument also assumes objective morality... it even attempts to make it so totally objective that it can be used to attack God.



Non-sequitur. You are still not using anything outside of naturalism to justify the existence of naturalism. Naturalism is a theory of everything... it cannot be grounded in the way you are attempting without begging the question.



Still justifying begging the question.



Still going for that genetic fallacy. Also you are equivocating between God's existence and warrant. Essentially you are trying to justify a genetic fallacy using epistemology. It still does not work.

Look at Master_Pendant's conclusion:
Thus, a divine source probably doesn't exist.

This is not a statement about epistemological warrant. His argument is essentially attempting to conclude that God does not, or likely does not, exist. This is not a statement about the epistemological warrant one has to believe in it on these grounds. Attempting to introduce this to the argument piles an equivocation fallacy atop Master_Pendant's own genetic one.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-tN7fcg1cw[/youtube]

If the Bible is held to be truth, which I don't feel is the case, then we have very little to go on as it would appear that things got f****d up right out of the gate. God put them there and said don't eat that, and the wench made straight for the "Don't Eat" tree. Any conjecture is made though implied intent. That the punishment for eating the fruit was to be cast from the garden and now must learn to cultivate food implies that this was never God's intent. This would imply one of, at the very least, two scenarios. Either food was intended to always be abundant, which would indicate reliably favorable weather patterns and ecological stasis, OR food was for pleasure and not to necessitate life, implying that even with little or no food man would not know hunger. This second theory is also backed up by the fact that God's final punishment was death. He tells Adam that "For dust you are and to dust you will return". In saying this during punishment, it can be assumed that God hadn't intended man to be mortal which in turn implies that a lack of food would have no effect on the body. These indicate a lack of hardship, more than likely a lack of illness, and consistently favorable living conditions... Which sounds pretty perfect to me. They were given everything they needed up to that point. No responsibilities, no conflicts. They ruled the beasts, so no predators. Still sounds fairly perfect.

Sure, it does not specifically say that Eden was "perfect".... It also doesn't day that God created other peoples on the earth, yet when Cain was cast out and sent out for the murder of his brother, he was afraid of the repercussions of the people he would meet. "My punishment for error is too great to carry. Here you are actually driving me this day from off the surface of the ground, and from your face I shall be concealed; and I must become a wanderer and fugitive on the earth, and it is certain that anyone finding me will kill me." Ge 4:13&14
"and from your face I shall be concealed" implies that up to that point he was not, and the text shows that his family had not been, "concealed" from God's face. Unless there had been other people in the world, God could have just told them, "Yo, I sent him away. Leave him alone." But that is not what happened. God "set up a sign" to keep him safe from others and sent him into the "Land of Fugitiveness". Not sent him away to the lands East of Eden and they became known as The Land of Fugitiveness. It was already named that, implying that there were already fugitives.

Page 11 and already so much implied and left to conjecture that it's really useless and cannot be claimed as truth because truth indicates some sort of knowledge.
"Truth" is synonymous with fact and reality. We don't have that. We have supposition and conjecture.

... and somewhere I heard Adam wanted his rib back.

Adam should have asked for his spine back.... I would say he was thinking with his cock, but text would show he wasn't aware he had one yet.... She said, "Eat", he said, "OK"... then when God showed up he turned and pointed to Eve and said, "But Daddy.. she made me do it.. punish her." and God, the putz, did.

AND, it would seem from the way I interpret it, Eve's actual sin was not being "fooled by the serpent" but tempting Adam into folly. This seems absolutely absurd because Adam did not appear to put up much of a fight.. It's not like Eve actually had to tempt him at all.. Now, you could argue that she tricked him.. it does say that she picked the fruit and gave it to him.... it doesn't say that he saw her do this or that he asked where it came from, so you could perhaps find him innocent on those grounds, but it also doesn't say he was ignorant of its origin.

Over the years, I have heard a lot of people talk about and even extrapolate upon that excerpt from Scripture, and I am still quite far from being qualified to say it means precisely one thing or another. However, one of the more interesting talks I have ever heard about that included the thought of Eve having done a bit of ad-libbing there since we have no *previous* mention of God ever having said anything about/like "... lest you die."

Point: From/At the very beginning, obedience at least might have been completely free of any kind of intimidation.

But of course, that does still beg a question about something like "leaving a child free to go 'play in the street'", so to speak.


Whether or not Eve actually had ad-libbed, she certainly was "lied to" ... and then had to decide who to listen to ...


I once did exactly the same* with "Ethyl" alcohol, and I would have tried to get you to drink with me if you had been anywhere near at the time!

*I will add a neat little story after bit, but right now I gotta go attend to a personal matter ...

Ge 2:16&17 "And Jehovah God also laid this command upon the man; "From every tree of the garden you may eat to satisfaction. But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die."

Well then, I stand corrected!

However, a lie had been spoken to Eve, and either she did not know who to believe or else she just wanted to find out for her own free-willed self.
====================================

This might or might fit completely here, but I like it...

No, you're just blustering about. I've already shown how a morally perfect being cannot exist if a best of all possible worlds does not exist. Even further, the logical structure is completely different than the omnipotence paradox, so bringing up the latter one is just rather silly.


Well, it either assumes objective morality, or it assumes theism has objective morality, or it assumes that a theistic God has specific stated traits that may or may not be moral but which relate to that which is traditionally assumed under the category of morality. The argument is one from incompatiblity, it doesn't require that the atheist have a certain belief, only that theism has an apparent contradiction with either an external or internal fact.


No... it really can. Viability and parsimony are metrics for the selection of theories. Saying "naturalism does well by our method of selecting a theory" is not improper in any way.


No, showing how your claim is just idiotic.


It can work.


I stated "if major intuitive supports for theism are shown to be questionable, then it may be that theism ought to be considered highly improbable given this, or at least that theism is less likely.".

There is no problem with this.

Wow... this is not getting any better for you... what a load of bad arguments. So let me get this straight... you are claiming that unless this is a perfect world a perfect being could not create it... what a load of rubbish. If it is logically impossible, then nothing can do it so God is not required to do it. Its the same as arguing that God is not omnipotent because he can't make a married bachelor. Natural Atheology was destroyed by Richard Swinburne years ago but by all means keep posting this stuff... MP will be the new leader of the strident atheists by default.




Once again you seem to be missing the point. If God exists then it naturally follows that he would have a reason for the level of evil in the world. Gods existence would entail a justifiable reason for a particular evil. To disprove this you would need to develop an argument that shows that God cannot have a reason for the level of evil. It is not simply enough to cite an evil or call it an evil, you would need to build your case from scratch since God's existence necessarily involves a justification. It is then incumbent on you to prove that no link is at all possible, since because it is necessarily so, it is true in all possible worlds. I have yet to meet an atheist who has ever been able to sustain the level of evidence required by modal logic to make the claim without begging the question of objective morality apart from God.



You do not seem to understand what it is that you are saying here... or at least what it is that I am saying. Naturalism, due to the fact that it is a theory of everything, entails necessarily the inclusion of viability and parsimony therefor they are not outside references. You can claim that naturalism is viable and parsimonious within naturalism but that does nothing to prove the claim of naturalism to be true or false. Naturalism entails, by default, the exclusion of everything outside of naturalism. You can claim all you like that it is viable and parsimonious but that would only apply within naturalism. Hence begging the question.



Except that it is a genetic fallacy.

You are making an appeal to the origin of a belief... this says NOTHING of the truth of the belief.

From commonsenseatheism:

"Atheists often want to say that Christianity is probably false because we know how it evolved: from ancient semitic polytheism to monolatry to anthropomorphized monotheism to Neoplatonic monotheism. We also have some plausible theories about how religious ideas evolved and originated in the human brain. But this argument, too, commits the genetic fallacy. The causes of religious belief may be unreliable, but it could still be the case that some religious beliefs are true, just as with the Bakuba child and his belief in finitely old stars."
http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=1280

I am claiming that unless this is a perfect world, a perfect being is nonexistent. The argument, as presented earlier, is that if no perfect world exists, but some worlds are better than others, that infinite logically possible morally better beings.

91, you're failing to understand the argument. The argument isn't "God is required to do X", the argument is that "trait X cannot exist, because the scale increases infinitely. God requires the trait X. Therefore, God does not exist". The structure of the argument is different, and your failure to recognize and appreciate that shows an intellectual failing.

Your appeal to Richard Swinburne is kind of... pointless. It is disconnected from what has been said. Even further.... even though Swinburne likely has done good work, his work is certainly not uniformly good, as a number of things he has presented have been rather ridiculous.


..... 91, your point is literally ret*d. M_P is arguing that trait X is incompatible with a theistic hypothesis because there are no justifiable reasons. This means that God does not exist given the claim.

Even further, your point on needing a deductive proof that God can't have a reason.... is just ridiculous. When constructing an argument, we use the best premises, we aren't required to deduce our premises and the premises to deduce our premises, as that leads to ridiculous regresses.

In short, you're making an assertion on what is necessary, and it is wrong. Your statement is utterly wrong, and the statement is an open intellectual failure.


............ 91, that's literally ret*d.

Naturalism is an ontological claim that is contested. Parsimony and viability are criterion of theory-evaluation that are standardly accepted as basic rules by both naturalists and non-naturalists. One isn't begging the question when using standard rules to show a non-standard result. By such a standard, ALL arguments on the nature of ontology are begging the question. which is ridiculous.


I actually think that the Parson's argument that is being criticized isn't absolutely bad. I wil l agree that I tend to side with Luke, but I don't think Parsons was making a bad argument. (I think the distinction is notable)

This is not your entire argument. Your justification for this position was that in order to be morally perfect God would always have to necessarily create a better world than the actual world. That does commit fall victim to the objection that you are requiring God to do the logically impossible. Now that your position was shown to be bogus you have accused me of not disproving your claim. Well I kind of did that by discarding the argument that makes you justified in inferring your conclusion. Stop attempting to shift the goal posts, this is just silly.

Now if you want me to destroy your entire contention than sure, why not:

If M is impossible
then all properties of M entail ~M
But since great-making properties do not entail less-making properties
It means that there are NO great-making properties.
(M= Maximal Greatness, in this case good) (~M= Non maximal greatness)

This would mean that there are NO great making properties. So here you are basically claiming that it is impossible for anything to be a great making property. Hence, things like intelligence, goodness and wisdom are not better properties to have than to lack... which is just absurd.

Further and more importantly you are essentially making a statement which is impossible. There is nothing more perfect than that which is perfect, from this you are using the principle of explosion. Everyone knows that if you assert a logical impossibility you can infer anything you want from it. The only way you could escape this is to deny the principle of explosion, in which case the former argument about great making properties would still stand.



There you go again... giving yourself a pass on logic...

If God requires a reason for X then it necessarily entails that he has a reason for x in every possible world.
If God has a reason for X in any possible world, then he has a reason for it in all possible worlds.
If God has a reason for X in all possible worlds, then he has a reason for it in the actual world.
Hence God has a reason.

The only way to disprove this argument is to state that God cannot have a reason for X in ANY possible world; otherwise you are just denying the basics of modal logic and the concept of necessity.



But Naturalism claims that nothing is viable or parsimonious outside of naturalism. Any fully enclosed belief system cannot really be established as 'properly basic' in the way you are attempting to do so. Since they, by definition cannot argue outside of themselves. This is not really an issue unless you want to use it to disprove another properly basic belief... which is what is being attempted... You don't seem to understand the limits of foundationalism.



I will assume that this is the sound of you beating a hasty retreat from your Genetic Fallacy.

Last edited by 91 on 14 May 2011, 2:11 am, edited 1 time in total.