God or No God - that is the question (for atheists)

Post deleted, since crashfrog brought up the same point already.This message has been edited by DominionSeraph, 08-12-2005 02:51 PM

If an additional entity was needed, you start simple, and add complexity only as it is needed. 'God', being a hypothetical person, is just about as complex as you can get. Now, why might a person choose to start with a tangled mess instead of something simple? Well, it would achieve some sort of finality; ie, "We can never understand God," which gives you an excuse to give up. And, of course, it also allows theists to keep believing what they currently believe about God; ie, "Further understanding is impossible, but what I already understand about God is right."
Both of those are emotional -- not rational.

If there is a Grand Design, we're redundant -- unless things aren't going as planned.

It'd be like me playing a chess game in my head, and then writing a chess program so that the two computer opponents play the same game that I just did.
Unless I'm checking for mistakes, that's kinda pointless.I wouldn't worry about it, though. There were about a dozen patches released in Genesis alone.
The Biblical God is a lousy programmer.This message has been edited by DominionSeraph, 08-15-2005 12:36 AM

I didn't see that in there. The suffering seemed incidental.
To me, it was more of, "God wants his pretty tapestry, and he doesn't care who he hurts in the process of getting it."It'd be like if God thought your arms would look prettier if your arms bent the other way, so he broke your elbows. He was even kind enough to put a picture of what you look like with your arms bent backwards in plain sight. You so pretty!But because of your shortsightedness, you blow off the idea of a psychopathic God as the fanciful creation of some pretty sick puppies.

True, but the suffering is still incidental.
This isn't a Tapestry of Life, in which the suffering is included in the pattern, as time is one of the dimensions of the tapestry. This is a tapestry of the living, with twisted bodies making up the pattern.

Duh. The question is meaningless. It's asking for the location on the grid where the grid is located. As far as I know, there's zero evidence for a fifth dimension, so zero evidence that 'causation' is even meaningful. I know of no one who says that. However, anything for which there is no evidence is completely irrelevant, as the nonexistent also leaves no evidence. As one cannot be differentiated from the other, they are exactly the same from our perspective.This message has been edited by DominionSeraph, 08-15-2005 11:31 PM

"Which cause is it?" came across loud and clear. As 'cause' refers to a specific set of coordinates on a 4 dimensional grid, asking for the 'cause' of the 4 dimensional grid is asking for the coordinates on the grid, for the grid -- like, "What's the latitude and longitude of latitude and longitude?" It's a meaningless question. The only tool I have to determine which concepts match reality and which do not -- observation. I also have reasoning from observation, which determines when a concept is likely to match reality. The potential for unobservable evidence is irrelevant.

Better:
What exists towards the middle of a line segment, from the middle of the line segment?'Towards the middle' is only meaningful if you're not at the middle. Once you're at the middle, all directions are, 'towards the ends'. 'Towards the middle' is simply not a direction, so asking, "What lies in that direction," is meaningless.(Damn I'm good. I wrote that figuring that someone would see the potential for just extending your line; which Catholic Scientist just did, and took advantage of.)In case some of you can't figure that analogy out, 'towards the middle' = before/prior. 'towards the end (from the middle)'= after/later. The BB is at the middle. So, "towards the middle from the middle" = "before/prior to the BB."This message has been edited by DominionSeraph, 08-16-2005 05:08 PM