Once upon a time there was an atheist. Like most atheists they did not believe in God because they thought he was a Big Meanie. The argument looks a little like this, "God, why do you let these bad things happen? You know, if you keep letting bad things happen then I will not believe in you. Alright God, you just let another bad thing happen, so now I will not believe in you! You do not exist. So take that, God!"
The bad thing that happened to this atheist was a family member dying. Everyone dies but people get more upset when it happens in certain ways. So the atheist did not blame God for the general matter of death and dying, just that it happened in what they thought was the wrong way in their family. Their mother had died early and their father had already abandoned them at that time. So one earthly creator was not a very good witness nor representative for the Creator and the other died. All these things combined and this atheist piled every evil thing that they could think of high until they came to that point of denying the Creator's existence. It often takes a big mound of things to get there, like a littany of problems that they build in their heads.
One day, they were philosophizing with another man and he said, "The existence of a Creator is a fact, already you know you did not create yourself and so you know you had at least one type of creator. Aristotle just extended this type of thing out to argue for the existence of an ultimate unmoved Mover."
The other man replied, "Yes, there are creators. And I hate my father for abandoning me."
His friend said, "But, he does still exist."
"He's not all powerful like people say God is. If he's so powerful then he should do something. He's just abandoning me too. So even if he does exist he does not matter to me."
"Then be honest and just say that you do not like God, not that he does not exist. God is not your earthly father. In fact, by the complexity of Nature and things of that sort it seems like he is an ultimate Being who does what he wills."
"I know! So if he is all that then he does not matter to me. He's not all that to me if he abandons me and so many other people too. Duh!"
"You know I like to deal with things from a broad philosophical perspective. But as to these personal things, who did he abandon?"
"My mother, she died of cancer."
"Was your mother just matter in motion? If she was then death is just more matter, in more motion. Then it was a delusion that you were ever talking to or loving more than just matter in motion."
"Of course she was not, she was a human being!"
"Who created human beings and so who then ultimately created her?"
"Alright, if I say her parents did then you'll go all the way back to abiogenesis or the Big Bang or something. I know you. And I know you can make evolution seem silly somehow, I can't seem to defend it. So let's just say that God did ultimately make her or cause her to be like you want to. So what? He still abandoned her, just like me."
"Well, you're right that I'm not used to dealing with an argument that is purely emotional. Essentially, it seems that you're saying that God does not do things as you would have God do things and so you refuse to believe in his existence.
Doing some research I read a news account once of a Rwandan mother whose son was murdered in the genocide there. Yet she forgave the killers because of her belief in God. I can give you the account if you like. She seems the opposite of you, she trusts God inspite of her feelings that he is letting things happen that should not happen."
"Just as I say, she has been abandoned and should know it. Look around you, where is God? Invisible?"
"Not another issue....at least we resolved that God does exist but that you believe in disbelieving to punish him for abandonment. So the real issue is if he has abandons people and not if he exists. So you're not actually an atheist but are still anti-God."
"That's fine with me."
"Okay, that was interesting. Maybe we can talk more philosophy another time."
"Alright.....I'm going to think of more ways that God is evil."
"It's a little odd to say that the definition of Good and the Creator of it, is Evil."
"I define what is good!"
"We'll have to talk about it later."
(Continued...)
9 comments:
I was trying to think of a way of ending that one sooner.
"you can make evolutionism seem silly somehow, I can't seem to defend it."
It would seem to me that evolution is not the silly science here. I would enjoy hearing your explaination of why evolution, not creationsim, is a silly science.
Creation science is put forth as being absolute fact and unchangeable. The world must conform to its understanding of the Bible, and if any observations may contradict it, it must be refuted, because it is wrong. Creationsit would rather disprove evolution, then attempt to prove their own pseudoscience. Creationists see no need to test their theory, since God has revealed it. But infallible certainty is not the hallmark of true science. True science does not concern itself with supernatural explanations of metaphysical phenomena.
Gish
Most athiests would have lost interest well into the 1st 500 words of the arguement, too much drinking and womanizing to do ;)
I don't believe in athiests..
"Creation science is put forth as being absolute fact and unchangeable."
All I am interested in is science being in persistent pursuit of the truth. There is evolutionary science that contains some explanations that are true. I am not up to speed on creation science, exactly. Yet, I suspect that it contains some explanations that are true.
Yet here is the evolutionism that creates the grand ol' mythological narratives of all sorts, like fairytales. Once upon a time, some things jumped out of trees, killing themselves, then, they grew one feather, then another feather...then one lil' wing.
This is changed now to, once upon a time, some dinosaurs had some feathers....and this means something or other, well, we'll have to make up a story about it. Maybe they jumped, jumped in the air and then grew one lil' wing...but it couldn't support the weight, like Big Bird on Sesame Street. Anyway, anything that merges categories of animals together is useful to us though.
You do not understand just how utterly stupid these lil' stories are until you look at the design of one single feather or wing. Or, look at the difference in soft anatomy between reptilian and avian anatomy. Arranging bones in lil' sequences and drawing a bunch of pictures about it puts you on the level of comic book reasoning. It's like saying that spider and man can merge to be a Spider-man. The mythical Dino-bird is very little different, these categories cannot just be merged together willy nilly, no matter how good the story it makes for.
"The world must conform to its understanding of the Bible, and if any observations may contradict it, it must be refuted, because it is wrong."
On the whole, the Bible does seem accurate, I am content to have science be in the pursuit of truth.
This is not the working definition of science for evolutoinists. They argue that science is the pursuit of naturalistic explanation. Then, surprise, surprise, all they find is one idiotic naturalistic narrative after another. Is it any surprise that they only find what they seek? This is only the past 100 years of science, it was much different before and science was driven on by those who wanted to crack the Cosmic code. They knew that codes are written by a writer. Even in the past 100 years, all the greatest scientists have become convinced of the Mind of God.
As to disproving evolutionism and how creationists like to do that. Yes, that's because it is fun. You can test what I say, as you like, though. So what is the scientific explanation for your writing? Come, let's test it.
"True science does not concern itself with supernatural explanations of metaphysical phenomena."
The metaphysical is transcendent, which is supernatural. Perhaps you meant physical phenomena. But it is intersting to note that psychiatrists do indeed concern themselves with explanations of the metaphysical phenomena and call it science.
Not an actual conversation, it's a bit of an amalgamation of some though.
"I don't believe in athiests.."
Why not?
Once upon a time there was an atheist. Like most atheists he knew what theists said about God. They said that God was omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly benevolent. But it seemed illogical to the atheist that such a being could exist. Therefore, he concluded that there was no such being.
Once upon a time there was also a theist. Like most theists, he loved God very much. When the theist discovered that there were actually people who believed that his God didn't even exist, he was dumbfounded! The theist convinced himself that these so-called atheists really *do* accept that God exists but they openly lie about it (probably because those atheists think that God is a big meanie.)
" They said that God was omniscient...."
I'd like to see where that is written. I think that God might like to know what it is to not know some things. Thus, the creation of paradoxes....for to knoow how to not know something of one's own creation one must be very creative.
" The theist convinced himself that these so-called atheists really *do* accept that God exists but they openly lie about it...."
Actually, once upon a time there was a theist and he talked with hundreds of atheists and then just reflected their views back at them.
Then, they snivel about it because their views did not make any sense. In fact, they eliminated sense by exchanging the animate for the inanimate, sentience for lack of it, the human spirit for dehumanization and the glory of God for images made to look like animals.
Suffice it to say that the typical atheistic arguments were not his fault, they were the atheist's fault. He had talked to enough to know.
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