Didn't Epicurus and Plato DESTROY the idea of God with these two questions ?!

Because like all other human beings you create your own God.

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Samuel also said unto Saul ... Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. 1 Samuel 15.1-3

 

Is there any proof that either Epicurus or Plato ever really existed?

 

Yes...quite a bit.

Unless documented and verified historical data should be dismissed.

 

I don't create God. God is God independent of my ideas about God. My ideas about God are of course limited by my own horizon, just as the ideas the authors of the Book of Samuel had about God were limited by theirs and your ideas about God are limited by yours.

 

Yes, I've read this rebuttal before. But, let me make sure I nail down your argument, you're saying whatever God does is Good because his nature is Good, correct?

 

So YOU say but of course the question remains who are you in all of this? How could the God you have chosen to call your own not be of your own creation? Everytime you choose what God is or does or isn't or doesn't regardless of your reasons it's just you and your bias.

 

Of course I'm biased.
But what makes my bias less valid than yours other than your own?

 

I probably wouldn't use the term "nature", but yes, I'd say God is ultimate goodness. God's being is Good.

 

I don't use it to make extraordinary claims and then try to defend those claims with the very bias I used to create it all the while claiming everyone else's version of the claim is wrong like you did to begin this conversation.

That is unless you consider my position that if there is no evidence to support a claim there is no reason to consider it true a bias, in which case I guess we are indeed in the same boat.

 

I don't suppose you understand that you just said you "do not create God"...and then clearly stated you do so?

We all imagine and then believe what we will, every human mind does this without exception. Pretending you do not is simply ignoring this fact, and making it clearly a truth.

 

you can't put God in the parent role to win your argument because parent's are not, by definition, all power and all knowing.

if a parent created an environment knowing a child would get harmed, it would be considered abuse - this is the example that illustrates God as God by definition knew the outcome of his experiment called existence and let it happen anyway. try again

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no, but i don't need to believe they existed to appreciate their words or knowledge passed.
the same can't be said for God who apparently is so insecure and evil he punishes the unbeliever with eternal hell and punishment.

 

Actually it would not be considered abuse because it happens all the time. As parents we have to let our kids get hurt both physically and emotionally in order for them to learn and we KNOW it will happen. Keeping your children sheltered won't do them any good. Now in regards to God and his experiment he is supposedly doing all of this for us which means he didn't "let" it happen he designed it to and one could argue that his design which includes suffering has a greater lesson attached to it, one perhaps we can't even see yet and if that was the case his morality would still be valid because it is subjective to an understanding beyond our own. But as I said if any of this is true it means we cannot be moral if we derive our morality from God because we cannot understand it.

 

that parents have no choice but to let their children grow up and experience the struggles of this life doesn't equate to God creating a world of suffering in the first place.

i have a 3 and 6 year old and i would NEVER knowingly put them in a situation where they are going to be hurt in any way.

now, my 6 year old plays soccer but i don't let him playing with the knowledge that he is going to break his arm - i do with the hope he doesn't. BUT, if I had the powers of God and knew he would break his arm at said point and time, I would never let it happen.

the same can't be said for your desert sky god who let it happen and knew it would - the parental example you give only works when you use sociopaths and absentee parents.

no moral and loving parent would treat their children they way the desert sky god treats those he created.

 

Epicurus assumed that God would define evil, and Plato assumed that gods would judge people. Both concepts are of course consistent with the above religions.

But a creator God that left it up to us to define evil, would not be expected to stop whatever we decide is evil, particularly as people can do so themselves. Unless such a God is to be a servant of it's creation, there is no reason why God would do what people can do for themselves.

Divine judgement is also inconsistent with the concept of ''free will,'' and an omniscient, loving God. So if there is a creator God that is both loving and omniscient, that created us with ''free will'' so that we may go on to create the world and beyond, however we see fit, then it would make no sense for God to punish people for doing exactly what they were created to do. Particularly as we decide what is evil, and punish people accordingly.

If there was no evil, we would not appreciate what is good. If everything was plentiful, we would not appreciate what we have. Life would be boring if there were no challenges, and everyone had everything they wanted. So for mankind to collectively experience life as we know it, perhaps we are already living in a perfect world.



If we are eternal spiritual beings in physical bodies, then perhaps it would be no big deal in the great order of things if we destroyed the world and everyone on it, particularly if there are lots of other planets with lots of other advanced life forms throughout the universe, all capable of creating their worlds as we create ours. As new planets are constantly formed, and new life-forms presumably appear on some of them, and old planets destroyed, perhaps the same eternal spiritual beings have the opportunity to experience different physical lives on different planets, by being ''born again'' into different physical beings, and our spiritual beings are the sum of our physical lives. Perhaps a spiritual being who lived a happy life would then want to experience a sad life, so that it could appreciate happiness all the more. Perhaps a spiritual being that had experienced life as a fit person might want to experience a life as a disabled person, so that it can appreciate being fit all the more. Perhaps all spiritual beings are in some way connected, and are all a part of God. Perhaps the sum of all physical life in the universe, is how God, who would have been a spiritual being before anything physical existed, experiences all aspects of physical life all at once.

So by doing whatever it is we do, all of us, would be doing ''God's work.''

 

Here's a better question........all three Abrahamian religions preach that all things come from God, including evil.

God is both all powerful and all knowing. He created Satan, knowing full well what evils would come with him. So he knowingly brought evil into existance.

They also claim that God can not cause or be near evil, which is why sinners can not enter Heaven.

So, how can you call God all knowing when he created Satan, who was evil.

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Here's a better question........all three Abrahamian religions preach that all things come from God, including evil.

God is both all powerful and all knowing. He created Satan, knowing full well what evils would come with him. So he knowingly brought evil into existance.

They also claim that God can not cause or be near evil, which is why sinners can not enter Heaven.

So, how can you call God all knowing when he created Satan, who was evil.

 

And what determines God's being?

 

Interesting points. Who knows how it all really works. Perhaps there are various Gods with varying powers. Perhaps some are not all powerful and do not know everything.

Perhaps there is no God's and some really advanced alien race who has been around for millions of years came here. These would seem like Gods to the people living back in the day.

Perhaps there is some all knowing power that spawns Gods from time to time but the spawning power does not participate and acts only as a creative force.

 

Those really aren't that difficult to answer.

The first one is that at least in Christianity God gave mankind free will. Some guy shooting another guy isn't an act of God its one human being evil towards another human just as a boyscout helping a fat ginger lady across the street is one human being good towards another pseudo-human. As far as tornadoes and earthquakes, I don't know how someone can call those acts of evil they are simply a part of the natural process. Depending on your point of view either god meddles in everything you do which kind of defeats the purpose of having free will in the first place or God only intervenes in very rare occasion preferring to let life take it course for the most part. Or maybe God never intervenes at all.

The second question is easy.. Assuming the gods existed first and in pretty much every religion or mythology I have ever heard that is the case then clearly its the second one. What is considered pious varies from religion to religion. So by definition the gods for each religion determine what is pious for their followers.

 

the dirty little secret that scientists know but won't admit is this -
The Universe including time, matter, space, has ALWAYS existed. There was no "big bang" - that is simply the point at which anything that exists is available for observation.

let's take a look at distance - when the Universe was 5 feet long, there must have been a time it was 2.5 long, and half of that and half of that - it goes on forever and ever. there was no beginning length.

the same with time - when the Universe was 5 seconds old, there must have been a time it was 2.5 seconds long, and so on.

TIME and SPACE are infinite !

 

How could the universe have ever been so small?

 

you're looking at it wrong - with a Universe that has existed forever, there is no such thing as small or big - it always just there.

there really was never a time it was 5 seconds old or 5 inches long - it is just a temporal moment in it's infinite expansion - i love the idea of an eternal Universe - no beginning, no end !

 

Without suffering would there be joy?

Doesn't change the fact that they are going to get hurt and that they will learn from that experience in a way you would not be able to simple teach through words.

That's because you are solely attached to your blood. God doesn't have two kids whose lives won't even be a blip on eternity’s radar. He has billions or trillions over the course of our time here on earth which changes the equation.

It would seem you have done a poor job of reading anything I have said from the start of this conversation. You are obviously also new here which is the reason you actually think I believe in God. God would be supernatural and have a subjective perspective you and I would hardly be able to comprehend so placing human restrictions on him doesn't really work. However as I have said I think in every reply to you that means we cannot know God at all and the entire bible would be meaningless. Clearly I agree with the strength of the questions seeing as how I started a thread on one of them quite a long time ago but the way you worded one of your responses which I can't remember now off the top of my head, at least IMO would allow for theists to confuse the conversation by arguing that Gods morality doesn't have to be the same as ours to be moral. I'm simply playing devils advocate here.

Because as I said above they are all we have, Gods position would be severely different from ours.

 

??? when did I begin this conversation claiming everyone else’s version of the claim is wrong? What claim? I’ve been through all my posts in this thread and could not find anywhere where I possibly said such a thing. Am I missing something? Or are you getting confused with the conversation we’re having in another thread? Even there I did not claim that everybody else is wrong – in fact I entered the conversation there with quite the opposite statement. All I claimed was that a literal/inerrantist/verbal inspiration interpretation of the Bible is wrong as is the assumption that being a Christian necessarily entails interpreting the Bible in such ways, that some atheists seem to have. Well, I stand by that, because incidentally there’s clear evidence that both points are indeed wrong.

And of course you are biased. We all are. From what I’ve read of you I deduce that concerning your philosophy you are more of a materialist and empiricist whereas I am more of an idealist and empiricist/rationalist. I also deduce that you probably don’t even know what I am talking about here, because frankly: your knowledge of philosophy seems to be even smaller than mine, and mine is minute. Well, you would not be alone. Recently Richard Dawkins had to openly admit that he did not even know what epistemology is. One does wonder why he’s in the business of discussing God then. Same with some atheists in this forum. No offense, mate.

 

What you don’t understand is that I just said that I believe that there’s such a thing as “The Absolute” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_(philosophy)), but that my ideas on that Absolute are necessarily limited, because I am not absolute. So how am I creating something that I don’t even claim to have a full idea of?

Now you may not share the belief that there’s an Absolute and that’s fine. I however follow Kant when he deems it a moral necessity and b) can’t help but believing it exists because of religious experiences whose revelatory truth I don’t expect you to take my word for if you have not had such experiences yourself.

 

Sigh … this question was already adressed in the very text I copy-pasted for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma

Very much shorter and easier put:

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” (Exodus 3:14)

If you need extra-explanation:

” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_that_I_Am

You may not share any of these beliefs, but it’s not as if they are philosophically daft. Which is why neither Epicurus’ question of evil nor Plato’s Euthyphro-dilemma (already answered by Plato himself) have destroyed the idea of God. Philosophers, both atheist and theist, have pondered these questions for ages and ages and obviously the idea of God is still very much alive.