What evidence absolutely rules out a Creator

As an atheist, I'm torn - as much as I'd like to see the atheist position defended, I'd prefer that its defenders didn't use such patently specious reasoning.Evolution contradicts the ideas about God that you learned in Sunday school, therefore there's no God at all? Like, did that seem compelling before you wrote it, or what?Back to the drawing board, RR. There's plenty of reason to conclude either no God or an irrelevant one, but this really isn't one of them.

Here's where you go wrong. There's no reason that a perfect being wouldn't choose to create an imperfect world.

He might create a world with every intention of it being imperfect; he could specify whatever flaws he chose and therefore, the world would be perfectly imperfect according to his perfect specifications. By definition, he can do anything he pleases, including creating a world with specified flaws and imperfections.Why is that so hard to believe? Even a master artist knows how to paint a poor picture.

Is God so simple, in your view?How does it make sense to you that such a simpleton God could be the creator and manager of the universe?

1) The Fall doesn't explain it. A good God would not have allowed the Fall.2) The Fall is not neccessary to explain it. Plenty of religions deal with the problem of evil in ways that don't even begin to involve the universe having fallen from some original perfect state due to man's actions. (Actually woman's actions, when you get down to it.)Defend atheism all you like but the specious reasoning does nobody any good.

In your mind it doesn't do any good. You actually have to bring those arguments out into the discussion.The little you've brought, so far, is specious reasoning for the reasons I've given, and that you have not yet rebutted.

If man screwed up, then man was flawed. A creation that contains something flawed is not perfect. The idea of the Fall - that a perfect creation manifested a flaw anyway - is self-contradictory. Oh? Excuse me? God is not the creator of Man in your religion?Well, the Bible says that he is, of course. And if God did indeed create Adam, then he created all parts of Adam, including his future. Adam was created to do exactly what he did; God did make him do it because God made him to do it. That's a pretty standard rationale for abuse. "I'm abusing you now to bring us closer together." It's the standard treatment at military school and boot camp.You'll pardon me if the moral calculus doesn't quite add up. 6 thousand years (we'll use the YEC timeline) of death and horror just for the "privlege" of having 1.5 billion Christians tell me how great they are, and how I should be just like them, except if I'm gay or a woman who needs to have an abortion.Yeah, that's some "greater glory." I don't think any of them are too logical. That's why I'm an atheist, remember? I didn't say that any of the religions handled it logically; Christianity certainly doesn't. But they're nontheless there, and they handle it to the satisfaction of their adherents. So clearly the Fall is merely one of several competing nonsense explanations of the problem of evil.

Cribbing Mere Christianity and the like doesn't a compelling apologetics make.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 03-13-2006 08:20 PM

I guess I don't know what is meant by "free will." I haven't had the same experience, I guess.

If no one tells me what it means, I have no choice but to be ignorant.

No - we just can't prove anything. Seems like a big difference, to me.