I Know That God Does Not Exist

In message 2446 you did a creditable job of ducking.

But can it be supported by rational argument?

Indeed. For example, one may rely on the advice of a friend who has a reputation of good judgment and make a wrong choice (rational, but wrong) but on the other hand one might base one's choice on a horoscope and get lucky (right, but irrational).

Yes, just as sentences can be true or false one concept may be illogical while a different concept may be logical. If you're saying that there are some concepts of a deity that are rational and some that are irrational I suppose one could stretch the concept into meaninglessness (People in the 1950s were said to have worshipped Juan Peron). But that is merely dropping down the proverbial rabbit hole.

I wrote "logical lacunae" to refer to gaps in logic. Logic that has gaps has flaws, does it not?

To say that, despite the evidence it's not solar radiation and the Coriolis effect but Poseidon who brings the great storms, is not logical.

Saying "There is no simple yes or no answer" is a fair answer.For a start.But not following up, simply leaving it at "there can be sound reasoning behind the concept of deities" without giving us some whys is leaving the answer incomplete (ducking).

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But the existence of rational arguments for something doesn't make that something true

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But the point is that the arguments aren't rational, they are all pure wish-fulfillment or a vague sort of "How could all this wondrous etc. etc. etc. without a designer?" It's emotional, not logical.

God only hates divorce if that's your personal god's belief. It's my understanding (though I'm not an expert) that religions such as Judaism and some Protestant sects consider marriage a contract or a rite and not a sacrament.But anyway...There have been plenty of tall tales down the years, from the Enuma Elish creation myth of the Babylonians through the journeys of Odysseus, the horn of Joshua, Paul Bunyan and the people scooped up by aliens and returned to draw oddly similar B-movie sketches of their abductors. Many people have sworn to the authenticity of some of these tales.

Jesus apparently disagreed with Moses, a problem, wouldn't you think?

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Matthew 19:6-9 What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery...

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But anyway...doesn't this show Jesus agrees there are grounds for divorce?

By this aren't you saying that you and other religions disagree on whether or not "God hates divorce"? What bible passage are you using to justify your disagreement with these other religions?

I've always thought that religions are vast piles of sentences saying an enormous variety of not necessarily consistent things, so somebody could claim whatever they want and pretend to have divine right behind them.

But you certainly shouldn't be punished for what someone else did.

You wrote

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The universe doesn't operate like Conway's Game of Life where you get complexity from quite simple basics.

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Simple things like Newton's laws can result in things that baffle supercomputers, like the trajectories of asteroids in the Solar System over the long term.But my point was not that the universe is simple, but that complex things can arise from simplicity, so there is no need to postulate a creator deity to explain the universe.

That makes sense.