Let me start out by paraphrasing David Carradine in “Kill Bill”. You may say I am being sadistic, but believe me, this is me at my most masochistic.This thread has already given me a headache, and I haven’t written it yet. Even the word “ontologics” gives me a headache. But hey, I’m in a masochistic mood.Ontologics is one of those pseudo-proofs-of-god that’s used so many times by those who are silly enough to engage Atheists in logical debate. It’s basicly a word game.The argument goes like this:1) Imagine a perfect being — a most perfect being. This being either exists or it does not. A most perfect being cannot “nearly exist”.2) This perfect being has many traits — unlimited power, perfect knowledge, etc.3) Existance is one of those traits. Of course, existence is better than nonexistence.4) Since a non existent being would not be as perfect as an existent one, a most perfect being would have to have existence as a trait. Therefore such a being must logically exist.God damn this headache!Dawkins calls it “rubbish” and points to the fact that the same can be said of any relatively unquantifyable thing. A “most smelly” object, a tastiest meal. But perhaps it is simpler than that. Perhaps the assumption that existence is better than nonexistence is flawed in and of itself. We live in a world where disease runs rampant, natural disasters wreck cities, etc. If an entity existed with unlimited knowledge and power, and let this kind of stuff happen, he’d be evil — much more evil, and therefore much LESS perfect — than his nonexistent counterpart.In other words if we imagine a most perfect being GIVEN THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT, we must conclude that the world would be much better off NOT having such a being exist — a being with power willing to let humans suffer — than having one. For having such a living entity would subject the Earth to a whim of a less-than-nice god.So a most perfect being GIVEN THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT, would not exist.
What,
Isn’t “perfectly subjective” an oxymoron?
Depending, of course, on how you define ‘perfect’ and ‘subjective’.
Isn’t language wonderful?
It’s imperfectly wonderful.
I realize that this is very late in the game as far as this thread goes but I felt obliged to deposite my two cents.
To me, what makes a belief in the God of the Bible so great is that it requires faith. If God were explainable, then someone would have explained Him by now. If He was disproveable, then someone would have disproved him by now. When giving an expaination about God and
His existance you have to start somewhere. You either start with the foundation that He does not exist and that the Bible is untrue, or you start under the belief that God does exist and that the Bible is true. (In this post I am only referring to the God of the Bible since that is the God that I have chosen to believe in).
Now we come to the faith part. I will analogize faith in God with trust between two people. I would not beleive that someone trusted my word if they asked me to prove, undeniably, everything that I said. So if I told my best friend that I got a new car and he refused to believe me until I showed it to him then I would not feel as though he trusted my word. Likewise, if God proved to us beyond a shadow of a doubt that He existed and that the Bible was true, then it would be not great task to beleive and trust in the word of God. Taking God’s word by faith we are demonstrating that we are obedient. There really is no logical explaination why I chose to believe. Their is plenty of evidence in my own life that confirms my belief but once again explaining these one must choose to believe that they are from God.
Faith is normal. Everyone has faith. Even all of you atheists. You have faith that when you open your can of soda, that there will actually be soda in it. You have faith that when you “go” at a green light that everyone else will respectively stop at there red light. You have faith that when you order food at a restaurant that the cook didn’t spit in it or that it is fresh or whatever. The only difference between that kind of faith and the faith in God is that you tend to find out right away whether that faith was ill-founded or not. Which makes exercising similar faith in the future much easier. When I attribute the things in my life to the Lord (good or bad), then I am able to more easily exercise my faith in the future.
m o n,
There is so much wrong in your post, but I will leave it to others to explain it to you.
You are confusing faith with belief; they are not synonymous. One requires evidence, the other does not.
You are absolutely correct about one thing: “There really is no logical explaination why I chose to believe.”
MON
What a bunch of idiotic BS. When I take a soda can and I ‘feel’ by weight that it’s empty, believe me, I will not have much faith that there will be soda in it.
Perhaps you would but then, you also believe in stuff that you just want to believe in. Simply because you are, as millions of others, one of those people who need a believe system in order to simply exist.
Anyone with at least some level of intelligence and enough self confidence knows that when the can feels empty, it is just empty. Likewise, if a god would exist then it would be clear (I for one would like to have the 800 number) PERIOD.
Master of None,
Read this article about the Equivocation fallacy and then go back and think about how you’ve used the word ‘faith.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation
Sorry to say it, but your two-cent check bounced.