God is Impossible

So because you always argued it, I have to accept it as an assumption? No.

I can know what its like to stick my hand on a gas burner. I haven't done it before, but I'm reasonably certain I can know what the feeling will be. I don't need the actual experience to know this.

I think about 85% of religion is BS - power, control, money, dominance, that's all it achieves. People pay tithes, religious figureheads live like kings - I can't drive anywhere in NC without being reminded every 10 feet that Billy Graham is some kind of patron saint. The very idea that you can have a personal relationship with some invisible diety, and yet you need someone to guide you and shape you and indoctrinate you - it's ridiculous.

Then there's the infighting and spin offs and intense hatred within groups, because one sect thought the 134th paragraph of Genesis meant X while the other firmly believes it meant Y...all these people fighting over what some illiterate monk transcribed poorly centuries ago, which has since been rewritten and revised and translated to form a more convenient mechanism.

But there is some good - people find meaning, mainly. For those people too weak to be good, too weak to face death and the thought of no longer existing - basically, for those not equipped for the level of existential thought humans are capable of, it fills that donut hole with a soothing salve of its-all-gonna-be-okay. For some money, and hours on Sundays, and for tacit approval of disrespect to women and gays, and patronage and immediate respect/glorification of all things religious, etc etc - that's a worthwhile trade to some people.

My wife was raised catholic, so my views have mellowed a bit - I'm not the anti-religious crusader I was in my teens and early twenties. Religion can give people balance, community...it can offer a lot of things that we as a society should be able to create on our own, but can't without labels and lines and being in/out of groups. It helps get us somewhere that a more open minded and progressive species would have been a long time ago.

I think it's sad that people devote so much time, effort and money to being a 'good christian' or muslim or what have you. I wish that time was spent being a good person, instead. Here in NC when people ask for money they claim they are 'a good christian', like that's some automatic get-out-of-poor-free pass or something. I know a lot of Christians that are selfish, self-serving A-holes - it's not like lip service to some religious doctrine makes you a less sh*tty person. It doesn't. Every religion has terrible terrible people in its ranks, and the automatic cult-like assumption that everyone inside your preferred bubble is A-ok is assinine.

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Originally Posted by LQ1Z34

So because you always argued it, I have to accept it as an assumption? No.

I can know what its like to stick my hand on a gas burner. I haven't done it before, but I'm reasonably certain I can know what the feeling will be. I don't need the actual experience to know this.

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Then you don't have experiential knowledge. You have assumptions. Are you trying to say you know what it feels like to rape or murder someone too b/c you can simply imagine what it would feel like?

No, but that's something different from person to person anyway. Some people would be horrified, others would be ecstatic. There's really no way of knowing if any of these assumptions hold true for a being such as God.

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Originally Posted by Alloutwar

I think about 85% of religion is BS - power, control, money, dominance, that's all it achieves. People pay tithes, religious figureheads live like kings - I can't drive anywhere in NC without being reminded every 10 feet that Billy Graham is some kind of patron saint. The very idea that you can have a personal relationship with some invisible diety, and yet you need someone to guide you and shape you and indoctrinate you - it's ridiculous.

Then there's the infighting and spin offs and intense hatred within groups, because one sect thought the 134th paragraph of Genesis meant X while the other firmly believes it meant Y...all these people fighting over what some illiterate monk transcribed poorly centuries ago, which has since been rewritten and revised and translated to form a more convenient mechanism.

But there is some good - people find meaning, mainly. For those people too weak to be good, too weak to face death and the thought of no longer existing - basically, for those not equipped for the level of existential thought humans are capable of, it fills that donut hole with a soothing salve of its-all-gonna-be-okay. For some money, and hours on Sundays, and for tacit approval of disrespect to women and gays, and patronage and immediate respect/glorification of all things religious, etc etc - that's a worthwhile trade to some people.

My wife was raised catholic, so my views have mellowed a bit - I'm not the anti-religious crusader I was in my teens and early twenties. Religion can give people balance, community...it can offer a lot of things that we as a society should be able to create on our own, but can't without labels and lines and being in/out of groups. It helps get us somewhere that a more open minded and progressive species would have been a long time ago.

I think it's sad that people devote so much time, effort and money to being a 'good christian' or muslim or what have you. I wish that time was spent being a good person, instead. Here in NC when people ask for money they claim they are 'a good christian', like that's some automatic get-out-of-poor-free pass or something. I know a lot of Christians that are selfish, self-serving A-holes - it's not like lip service to some religious doctrine makes you a less sh*tty person. It doesn't. Every religion has terrible terrible people in its ranks, and the automatic cult-like assumption that everyone inside your preferred bubble is A-ok is assinine.

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I'm Christian, and I totally agree with your views. At least on the point that being Christian doesn't automatically make someone Christlike, or even more Christlike than a Muslim, or Atheist. Not all Christians are the same, just as you can't classify all Atheists.

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Originally Posted by LQ1Z34

This article has way too many assumptions to even attempt to prove anything. Examples: "If God is perfect, there can be no disequilibrium. There is nothing he needs, nothing he desires, and nothing he must or will do. A God who is perfect does nothing except exist." Huh? What's the point of perfection if you 'just exist'?

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Because the definitions of perfection negate the "need" for anything. A perfect being wouldn't "need" worship or be "jealous" because he would be perfect. You only need something if you are missing something. If you are perfect, you are missing nothing.

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"A God who knows everything cannot have emotions. " Why not? You can't just say things are exclusive of each other, and then think you proved point. WHY would emotions be contradictory?

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Did you read the explanation directly after?

"A God who knows everything cannot have emotions. The Bible says that God experiences all of the emotions of humans, including anger, sadness, and happiness. We humans experience emotions as a result of new knowledge. A man who had formerly been ignorant of his wife's infidelity will experience the emotions of anger and sadness only after he has learned what had previously been hidden. In contrast, the omniscient God is ignorant of nothing. Nothing is hidden from him, nothing new may be revealed to him, so there is no gained knowledge to which he may emotively react."

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Originally Posted by etothep

While I didn't read what Free posted (insert "Didn't Read, LOL" gif)

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My bad. All posts after this one will now be 7 words long and be accompanied by illustrations.

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Originally Posted by free2131

My bad. All posts after this one will now be 7 words long and be accompanied by illustrations.

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no illustrations, didn't read

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Originally Posted by free2131

Because the definitions of perfection negate the "need" for anything. A perfect being wouldn't "need" worship or be "jealous" because he would be perfect. You only need something if you are missing something. If you are perfect, you are missing nothing.



Did you read the explanation directly after?

"A God who knows everything cannot have emotions. The Bible says that God experiences all of the emotions of humans, including anger, sadness, and happiness. We humans experience emotions as a result of new knowledge. A man who had formerly been ignorant of his wife's infidelity will experience the emotions of anger and sadness only after he has learned what had previously been hidden. In contrast, the omniscient God is ignorant of nothing. Nothing is hidden from him, nothing new may be revealed to him, so there is no gained knowledge to which he may emotively react."

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I read all of it, and I'm still not sold on your assumption.