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cindyjohn
New Member
2 Posts |
Posted - 12/25/2012 : 20:42:49 [Permalink]
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| Thanks. I like the sites you recommended. |
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Valiant Dancer
Forum Goalie
USA
4826 Posts |
 Posted - 12/26/2012 : 19:49:00 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by cindyjohn
Thanks. I like the sites you recommended.
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What sites were recommended by anyone on this thread?
I sure hope that you are here to add to the discussion and not just fulfill the posting requirements to be able to spam our users with adverts for the website in your profile.
That would be a banning offense. |
Cthulhu/Asmodeus when you're tired of voting for the lesser of two evils
Brother Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion |
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ThorGoLucky
Snuggle Wolf
USA
1486 Posts |
Posted - 12/26/2012 : 20:07:01 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by cindyjohn
Thanks. I like the sites you recommended.
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Spam bot. Spam link in its profile. |
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AyameTan
New Member
Japan
36 Posts |
Posted - 01/04/2013 : 01:35:21 [Permalink]
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Written by Comfort, published by right-wing reactionaries at World Net Daily. Need I say more?
http://www.amazon.com/review/RCLH5BZ72F7LW/ref=cm_aya_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1935071068#wasThisHelpful
"Creation Isn't Evident
......despite what Comfort, Cameron, Eric Hovind and their ilk will try to tell you. Modern life is indeed complex, but it need not always be that way. Recent experiments have shown that abiogenesis (life from non-living materials) is possible. And despite what you may believe or have been innocently indoctrinated to believe in Sunday school and/or what passes as biology "teachers" in recent years, given the Bush administration's tax cuts (we have rational, science-minded people to thank for keeping biased, right-wing, totalitarian creationist literature out of states outside Texas).
Now on to Ray's "explanations" as to why an all-loving, all-powerful and all-knowing god would allow any suffering (let alone the surfeit of misery experienced every day by sentient beings).
The Problem of Evil is an insurmountable one for Christians (and all other theists who believe in a perfectly loving, all-powerful and all-knowing god). There have been intense and motivated efforts over the past two millennia to defend such a position rationally, and they have all failed. Miserably. Utterly. And in many cases, dishonestly.
Some approached involve invoking an unknown "greater good" defense (which throws god's omnipotence under the bus. An omnipotent deity could simply actualise a desired goal without needing to use suffering as a "middle man"). Attempts to shift the problem by asserting that human happiness is not the goal of life (but knowing god is) removes the omnibenevolence and omnipotence of god (if you love someone, you don't want them to suffer. It really is that simple).
Here, Comfort takes the old canard of free will. Unfortunately, free will is meaningless unless everyone has an equal amount of it. This is undeniably NOT the case. Not everyone is given the same lifespan, physical strength, mental acuity, political clout, financial resources, and so on. Comfort is pontificating from the luxurious confines of his residence, funded by conveniently gullible sheep. This has certainly damaged his ability to empathise with the billions who live on less than a dollar each day. And the thousands who starve to death every time the Earth completes a full rotation.
Comfort also, perhaps unwittingly, advocates a social Darwinism in which the rich and physically powerful are able to murder, rape and steal from weaker individuals (and are therefore less able to exercise their own free will to prevent their own suffering). Comfort, by his own admission, worships a cosmic pedophile who revels in granting freedom to abhorrent individuals while getting his jollies from seeing the most vulnerable suffer and die in agony (only to get thrown into even more torture in the Christian vision of hell).
Lastly, a loving god would take away free will from those who would willingly surrender it in return for a life without suffering. Funnily enough, Comfort seems to believe in a heaven without suffering but with all the bells and whistles of freedom. So why not create that universe from the get-go and stick with it? Why create a universe with even the possibility of corruption? It certainly is not something a perfect god would do. Then again, a perfect god would not blackmail beings he supposedly loves for eternal worship.
Eternalism doesn't work as a dodge. If a god has perfect foreknowledge, then he's still responsible. And as we experience a coherent, cohesive set of events, I don't see how eternalism could be true.
NONE of the theodicies thus far created hold any water. Why? Because an omnipotent deity does not need to use evil to achieve greater goods.
Any such being could achieve the desired outcome from the get-go, no suffering required.
Comfort engages in numerous logical fallacies. He commits special pleading to let his god off the hook. He clearly does not hold his god to the same moral standard as his god supposedly holds humans to. An all-powerful, all-knowing being who did nothing while billions starved to death is just as guilty as someone who caused such deeds personally. Might does not make right.
Painting god as a loving father who "suffers with" us is almost as bad. Such a god doesn't do a thing to alleviate suffering.
As for miracles, well, all miraculous claims have already failed the test of empirical studies and analysis. Take the famous Templeton Prayer Study (2006), which empirically tested 1800 heart patients split into three groups.
(1. Patients who were told people would pray for them)
(2. Patients who were not told people would pray for them, but people did pray for them)
(3. Patients who were not told anything, and nobody prayed for them)
The patients who knew they were being prayed for ended up with the most post-surgery complications (likely due to expectation bias)." |
"Tatti hitori no inochi wo sukuu mono wa zensekai wo sukuu." |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
Posted - 01/04/2013 : 09:17:50 [Permalink]
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Ray Comfort is an idiot. He's also a liar. He's a perfect fit for Wing Nut Daily.
Nice review AyameTan! |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Machi4velli
SFN Regular
USA
854 Posts |
Posted - 01/04/2013 : 21:43:31 [Permalink]
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The C.S. Lewis review is about 5% review and 95% rant.
His incessant appeal to human ignorance of God and yet faith in God's goodness skewers most of his arguments in defense of a kind God in my book, but I'd like to see anywhere he advocates anything like social Darwinism.
It's unfair to reject his bases that lead him to an acceptance of an apologetic position toward God's allowance of an unfair distribution of pain and then act as if his positions aren't rooted in those bases, and therefore argue he is some sort of sadistic advocate of social Darwinism.
Beyond that, I think the review argues against points Lewis disagrees with in the book! Some of his arguments in this book in fact do challenge the view that an "all-powerful" God even has the ability to allow beings such as humans to exist without pain. As such, the concluding paragraph of the review has very little to do with the arguments of Lewis in the book. |
"Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
-Giordano Bruno
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge."
-Stephen Hawking
"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable"
-Albert Camus |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 01/05/2013 : 08:52:10 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
Nice review AyameTan! |
I'm not so sure. Like some of his other "reviews," he doesn't seem to actually engage with the contents, he just uses the book as a jumping-off point for some maybe-somewhat-related complaints. It's like someone "reviewing" The Demon-Haunted World with ten paragraphs on why atheists are evil.
I find it rather annoying. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Apologetic Reviews
