Why does my God allow children to die? Is he evil?

[1robin]

As it happens I do have an obsidian knife, acquired many years ago in Guatemala. On the matter of the altar, I fear I must disappoint.

As long as Cortez or Pizarro's descendants do not think you have any gold in your house you may be ok.

I saw the Jaguar soldiers on that deadliest warrior show. They hacked the head completely off a ballistics horse (yes a horse) with one blow. They did not stop .68 balls of lead to well though.

If you do not hate what he Aztecs did who's habits could you? Even their diabolical neighbors considered the Aztecs as barbarian lunatics.

 

[1robin]

If the Bible is the objective truth we should go by, why don't we stone people for immoral behavior? That was God that gave us the laws that must be obeyed and how to deal with the law breakers? Or, is God's Law in the Bible not the "objective" truth and we humans are seeking something new and changing are old standards and trying to find some kind of moral and just way to live with each other?

Because just as our rules (based on objective moral concepts) change with situations, purposes, circumstances, and age that law has never applied outside Israel and not even there in 2000 years. Not to mention it took for example both the rebellious child's parents and a senior priests agreement to do so. God's law are a combination of objective moral truth, circumstances, purpose, and role.

However that has nothing to do with what I was talking about. This is application and apprehension stuff, not foundational issues.

I do not care if anyone agreed on what they are, the only possibility anything is morally wrong is if God exists. NO matter how many times I explain the difference or tell people not to take off ramps my strictly ontological arguments are instantly turned into epistemological ones by non-theists. I would ask why but I already know.


You have two choices.

1. Some moral actions are inherently wrong regardless of if anyone agreed or not.

This one requires God to be true and is believed by almost everyone outside atheistic scholarship circles and psychopaths.

2. Moral actions consist of human contrived ethical or legal prohibitions or allowance that has nothing to do with known moral truths. They are in the end cultural fashions and change like the wind because they have no fixed foundations.

This one is true even without God but can't be true if the biblical God exists. It is also responsible for or conducive to some of the greatest evil in human history. It is very rational to claim we ought to adopt Christian morals as absolutes even if Christ did not exist. If nothing else they provide fixed stability instead of blowing around with whatever political or martial will is in power at the time. They do not pardon murderers and allow the murder of human lives in the womb and call them both right.

 

[1robin]

He's an intellectual brat. Bring him here. I'll show you. Just don't blame me when I make him cry in front of the whole forum and run away to hide behind his mama's apron.

This illustrates my point exactly. Requesting I bring a PhD to my computer is not sincere, it is not even funny. It is just 30 second of my life I will not get back.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

This illustrates my point exactly. Requesting I bring a PhD to my computer is not sincere, it is not even funny. It is just 30 second of my life I will not get back.

Yeah, that's because you seem to have some difficulty extracting meaning from the statements of others. But there is much more to human communication than the surface grammar, you know. There is the deep meaning. I'm pretty much an expert in extracting such meaning from the other guy's utterances. I've spent my life at it.

Here, let me show you what my statement (about bringing your PhD to this forum) actually meant, by paraphrasing it for you:

Your experts are not the grand majestic Authority Figures which you proclaim them to be. You are just making empty claims about their great power to dominate others (your perceived ideological enemies) in debate. Your claims about them are false.

I will confess that I understand your issues with extracting meaning from language, but I just can't bring myself to speak to you in pedestrian ways. I tried that for awhile, early in our engagements, but I just can't do it anymore.

But please don't despair. I still love you and all.

 

[adi2d]

This illustrates my point exactly. Requesting I bring a PhD to my computer is not sincere, it is not even funny. It is just 30 second of my life I will not get back.

Come on Robin. That was a little funny

In my subjective opinion of course

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

Come on Robin. That was a little funny

I got a million of 'em.

 

[cottage]

Do you consider your parents contradictory if they punished your wayward actions? In that context the analogy is very similar. He is logically compelled to allow (and I will even say cause) suffering in a universe that is designed to his purpose. Again you must show God's purpose was unjustifiable, or that his method's given the purpose were unjustifiable. He did not create us error prone. BTW he even saves us in-spite of having chosen to not only be error prone but to revel in being such and even calling error as correct and teaching others the same. What insulates him from your criteria is infinity. I have asked questions I not only think you cannot answer but if God exists I do not think have even theoretical methods to say a criteria exists to enable what you claimed regardless of perception. Where are you getting your criteria from? I have explained this convenient but al too real impossibility many times now. You can't condemn God through moral judgment. You might be able to condemn the concept through contradiction but I do not think you have gotten close yet.

Neither the Parent/child analogy nor the free will defence get God off the hook. For while the parents brought about the existence of the child, the parents themselves were caused by God and are essentially no different from their offspring in that respect. They too are finite, temporal, error-prone creatures. Therefore the parents cannot be held directly responsible for the child’s every action. If God is the Creator, the first cause and the cause of all subsequent causes, the parents themselves must be a contingent effect. But if God sustains every minute of our existence, then it follows that every minute of that existence lies under God’s causal power and knowledge. In other words, if it is true that we cannot exist without God’s sustaining power and awareness, then it is also true that we cannot act entirely independently of it. Craig says (and it is only on this particular subject that I’ve ever heard him resort to an argument from ignorance) that “we’re not in any position to say God doesn’t have a sufficient reason for allowing evil.” As a matter of fact we are! Further down the page I’ve given an explicit definition with its necessarily implied contradiction. And since there cannot be sufficient reasons why a bachelor might be married, or why a triangle might have fewer than three sides, it is for you to overturn the logical contradiction in order to make your case. Note that the contradiction must be disproved; you cannot make a special plea, a la Craig, to a supposedly unknown or unknowable justification (argumentum ad ignorantiam).

It was not a statement that includes a conclusion. It was a premise that does not lend it's self to a conclusion beyond what I would expect given God and the purpose of creation. Again you must show ends do not justify the means. I do not think you or anyone even has the theoretical capacity to make any kind of determination about that. This is above disagreement. I do not think you have access to anything that merits contention. Omni-max beings determine what is good, they are not subject to determinations about good from their creation. About all you could do in this context is decide to accept or reject a God that produced this reality. As I have said I can reject Allah (and happily do so) but cannot say if he exists he was wrong. That option just does not exist.

Craig’s central defence (which is what you're using) is based upon humans’ ability to freely make bad or evil choices. And there are serious problems with that.

The argument being made is one of human vanity – one that actually undermines the concept of God. It is as if to make human existence (and free will) itself the raison d’être, but if God lies under no necessity to create worlds, then he certainly lies under no necessity to create humans. That he did so provokes the question why when God is self-sufficient in all things he seeks a relationship with and glorification from his creation? And remember that creatures that didn’t formerly exist cannot benefit in any way by being brought into existence to experience God’s love. So the act of creation itself is incoherent.

Humans suffer irrespective of the choices they make. A new born child doesn’t choose to suffer Leukemia. And the so-called metaphysical or natural evils are not the result of our choosing them, but occur because that is the way God made the world. And even where we do act badly we can only chose what is already there to be chosen, existent in a world that God created. It certainly cannot be argued that evil and suffering have necessary pre-existence without contradicting God’s perfect innate goodness and supreme ontological status.

As much as I hate doing so I request you only or primarily supply logical reasons a good God CANNOT create a world with freedom in it to choice incorrectly and necessarily produce suffering.

An omnipotent creator God causes and conserves the existence of everything. And a benevolent, all loving God cannot send evil into the world. Those two sentences are analytic, and they are true because they cannot logically be false. The notion of God granting lesser beings an ability to oppose his will is not an attribute necessary to the concept of Supreme Being, and causing suffering contradicts his supposed benevolence. The existence of suffering and the granting of free will is entirely at odds with the conception of love as care and concern for the loved, a continuous, charitable, unconditional, affection for someone, which is deep, genuine, and unremitting.

The problem of evil allows for a god that does exist, but one that is not all loving. The fact that evil and suffering are caused and permitted on God’s terms demonstrates that moral codes are relative by his standards. Intentionally causing an innocent child to die a painful death is murder, regardless of the hand responsible.

1. An all loving, all powerful, perfectly good God cannot be sometimes merciful, sometimes not.

2. There is no mercy and perfect goodness where there is suffering.

3. There is suffering

Therefore there is no all loving, all powerful, perfectly good and merciful God.

Premise #1 and #2 are self-evident (note the quantifier ‘All’ in #1). Premise #3 is the factual evidence, and from which the conclusion necessarily follows.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I knew you could not produce a verse where God desires taking human life. I thought your would clarify. Instead you chose the worst route. Confusing a statement about necessity with desirability. Since I know this is coming I am using desirability as preference. God did not want to punish or kill anyone (he even says so directly and emphatically in many verses and I gave a few). Here is saying that BECAUSE of the choices made by free moral agents that were so terrible that to stop them from corrupting the very fallible Jews he would have to kill them.

This is ludicrous. Talk about semantic nonsense.

If god had no desire to punish or kill anyone then she shouldn't have commanded it be done.

 

[1robin]

Come on Robin. That was a little funny

In my subjective opinion of course

What part did you find witty? I am a great notice of wit and appreciate it as much as any quality. I can find no hint of it in that post. I can tell it was not serious but it fails at least my test for humor.

 

[1robin]

Yeah, that's because you seem to have some difficulty extracting meaning from the statements of others. But there is much more to human communication than the surface grammar, you know. There is the deep meaning. I'm pretty much an expert in extracting such meaning from the other guy's utterances. I've spent my life at it.

You have certainly perfected self glorification. If this was true why are you the only person in my entire life to consistently claim they do not understand the simple statements I make (regardless of irrelevant grammatical mistakes)?

Here, let me show you what my statement (about bringing your PhD to this forum) actually meant, by paraphrasing it for you:

I know what the statement means. That is why I know it was devoid of sincerity, merit, and fails to supply humor.

Your experts are not the grand majestic Authority Figures which you proclaim them to be. You are just making empty claims about their great power to dominate others (your perceived ideological enemies) in debate. Your claims about them are false.

I am doing what is done in every classroom, every courtroom, and every formal debate I have even heard of. Giving expert opinion. It is perfectly valid. You of course do not find the experts opinion convenient so false claims to appeals to authority, flat falsely stating the use to which I used authority, and making satirical statements that are not. If you want to stick your head in the sand when those who should best know make claims that do not suit you then have at it but do not expect me to validate or agree with the justifications you give to attempt to make it look appropriate.

I will confess that I understand your issues with extracting meaning from language, but I just can't bring myself to speak to you in pedestrian ways. I tried that for awhile, early in our engagements, but I just can't do it anymore.

This is typical. All non-Christian / Christian miscommunications are the result of the Christian just being far too ignorant to see how smart the non-Christian is. My Lord this arrogance is unattractive and corrosive to credulity.

But please don't despair. I still love you and all.

This statement certainly proves your claims to extracting meaning accurately from posts is over blown.

 

[1robin]

I got a million of 'em.

That is the whole problem. Having a million insincere and (far worse), non humorous attempts at humor, is not something to be bragged about. I could even take that if included with challenging and sincere attempts at scholarship and evidence but I do not even have that.

 

[adi2d]

What part did you find witty? I am a great notice of wit and appreciate it as much as any quality. I can find no hint of it in that post. I can tell it was not serious but it fails at least my test for humor.

This just shows that humor is subjective.

 

[1robin]

This is ludicrous. Talk about semantic nonsense.

If god had no desire to punish or kill anyone then she shouldn't have commanded it be done.

That is the whole point and why I made very sure to illustrate the competing contexts and/or meanings of these claims.


There is an infinite difference between liking to kill and being willing to kill if necessary. We all recognize this and allow for it even with each other. We would electrocute a man who simply loved to kill, and we will give medals to and build museums for a man who killed because his enemy made it necessary.

Now when you say God wanted to kill people which one of those contexts do you mean?

1. Since it is not much of a indictment to claim God is willing to kill if he has morally justifiable reasons to do so forced on him by the actions of others, I figured that could not be what you were saying. I have also spent page after page explaining why this context is not the other context. Why wiping out an entire culture can be necessary, etc... We have beat this one to death and whether you will accept the easily discerned necessity given purpose and method has nothing to do with whether it was supplied. This one is over with.

2. That only leaves you claiming God likes to cause death and that is what I spent my argument countering. I showed neither history nor his revelation is consistent with this view and more importantly your verses do not even fall in this context at all. I do not see how this one is not over with, even though it had little beginning to start with.

Is there some third option you have invented not covered by those two? God does not desire death for it's own sake. He abhors it and regrets even it's being necessary at all. If you have a just God and a race of humans that routinely go terribly wrong (like the Canaanites, Nazi's, and the rulers in the USSR demonstrate) conflict is expected, necessary, and justified. Your not liking the methods by which evil is eradicated at times is not an argument.

 

[1robin]

This just shows that humor is subjective.

Since the comments were made to me specifically my subjective view of humor would be the most relevant. I don't tell canned jokes but my satirical comments are tailored for the personality of who they are directed at. Anyway none of this is really important. My problem is chiefly I never get anything of substance from the person in question. The subject deserves far more thoughtfulness. God true or false is about the most profound issue in human history.

 

[johnhanks]

As long as Cortez or Pizarro's descendants do not think you have any gold in your house you may be ok.

According to your earlier remarks I'd be OK, wouldn't I? Wouldn't god have sent them to my house to put me right on a few things?

If you do not hate what he Aztecs did ...

I'm not sure you can literally "hate" such a remote and alien culture; revulsion isn't quite the same thing, and as I said earlier I'm glad not to have been born into that time and place. But some of their art is superb.

... who's habits could you?

Tempting, of course, to get in a cheap shot and say I'd hate any tribe whose religious leaders commanded the extermination of entire cities, women and infants and all. But as I said it's hard literally to hate such a remote and alien culture, so again I'll settle for revulsion.

 

[SkepticThinker]

That is the whole problem. Having a million insincere and (far worse), non humorous attempts at humor, is not something to be bragged about. I could even take that if included with challenging and sincere attempts at scholarship and evidence but I do not even have that.

I thought it was funny and cute.

 

[1robin]

Neither the Parent/child analogy nor the free will defence get God off the hook. For while the parents brought about the existence of the child, the parents themselves were caused by God and are essentially no different from their offspring in that respect. They too are finite, temporal, error-prone creatures. Therefore the parents cannot be held directly responsible for the child’s every action. If God is the Creator, the first cause and the cause of all subsequent causes, the parents themselves must be a contingent effect. But if God sustains every minute of our existence, then it follows that every minute of that existence lies under God’s causal power and knowledge. In other words, if it is true that we cannot exist without God’s sustaining power and awareness, then it is also true that we cannot act entirely independently of it. Craig says (and it is only on this particular subject that I’ve ever heard him resort to an argument from ignorance) that “we’re not in any position to say God doesn’t have a sufficient reason for allowing evil.” As a matter of fact we are! Further down the page I’ve given an explicit definition with its necessarily implied contradiction. And since there cannot be sufficient reasons why a bachelor might be married, or why a triangle might have fewer than three sides, it is for you to overturn the logical contradiction in order to make your case. Note that the contradiction must be disproved; you cannot make a special plea, a la Craig, to a supposedly unknown or unknowable justification (argumentum ad ignorantiam).

It is very exasperating to know exactly what someone will say, to counter it with explanations and clarification, and have it said anyway. I said specifically that only within that narrowest of contexts does the analogy apply. Just as a child is given different rules derived from the same mindset and moral compass as they progress, the human race has been given the same. Given purpose and method this analogy has no meaningful flaw. Only by eradicating both and thereby changing the context to one that does not exist does the analogy fail. BTW the parents responsibility for the child's actions and their fallibility had no role in the analogy.

I do not believe God is the cause of all subsequent events. I think determinism regardless of source is a failed argument. I also do not believe he upholds all occurrences directly. I believe human choice is basically automatous and that God set up a system to sustain but not determine our environment. When man fell he stopped supervising all events for optimality and left us victim to natural law and our own choices. I do not claim we are completely severed from God's influence but his influence generally does not determine choice either.

I do not see how it is even remotely possible we have a criteria capable of judging God and look forward to it.

Craig’s central defence (which is what you're using) is based upon humans’ ability to freely make bad or evil choices. And there are serious problems with that.

There are serious problems but they are not philosophical.

The argument being made is one of human vanity – one that actually undermines the concept of God. It is as if to make human existence (and free will) itself the raison d’être, but if God lies under no necessity to create worlds, then he certainly lies under no necessity to create humans. That he did so provokes the question why when God is self-sufficient in all things he seeks a relationship with and glorification from his creation? And remember that creatures that didn’t formerly exist cannot benefit in any way by being brought into existence to experience God’s love. So the act of creation itself is incoherent.

You left the argument at hand completely and restated one used a while back. I have already addressed this. Creation is an expression of will or choice not a necessity. God chose to create he did not have and no necessity issues impact most choices. Necessity simply has no relevance in God's choice to create. I do finally get your benefit to non-existent creatures claim. You must have worded it differently. I do not know that benefit would be the operative word. I think being thankful for what was received would be more applicable. I may not have existed at one time, I would still be infinitely glad and fortunate to spend eternity in complete contentment with God. I would not choose to instead have never been created, instead. BTW in my view that is what occurs if you reject God. You get exactly what you chose. An eternity with him and infinite joy over it (whether I had once not existed or not), or non-existence. If I am eternally full of joy and consider the gain infinite does it really matter what philosophic gymnastics are used to suggest I should not be. I have a lot of reasons to doubt your benefit clause but it would take a long time to lay them out. The end result would render the effort moot anyway.

Humans suffer irrespective of the choices they make. A new born child doesn’t choose to suffer Leukemia. And the so-called metaphysical or natural evils are not the result of our choosing them, but occur because that is the way God made the world. And even where we do act badly we can only chose what is already there to be chosen, existent in a world that God created. It certainly cannot be argued that evil and suffering have necessary pre-existence without contradicting God’s perfect innate goodness and supreme ontological status.

I have often said God judges individually and corporately. Humans as a species have betrayed God. All of us. Some come back and admit it, most do not. God does work through tragedies in individual lives and when we (represented by Adam) fell all of creation ceased to be supervised by God as it was intended to be. This IMO results in hurricanes, disease, and fish tacos. IOW the entire universe is a gallery of something that retains it's intuitive greatness but seems to have been broken and no longer functions as intended. Cultures from the beginning almost universally include some kind of golden time that has went terribly wrong and is capable of restoration. IT is not the case that God is sending a tornado to wipe out a church for example but that tornados are not always stopped from hitting churches. There is an OT verse that says …

11So He said, "Go forth and stand on the mountain before the LORD." And behold, the LORD was passing by! And a great and strong wind was rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12After the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of a gentle blowing. 13When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. And behold, a voice came to him and said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"…
1 Kings 19:12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.

In it's cryptic way it seems to suggest tragedy is allowed by God but not routinely caused by God. It has a role in waking up a race asleep at the wheel. The problem is so deep and our rebellion so entrenched that only the most shocking events can shake us out of slumber. I know that it took events that almost killed me to make me finally start thinking without prejudice. The same is true of most that I have counseled. The reason we draft the young is they think they cannot die. That is a human condition. We just are not willing to accept the terrible costs of sin until we are forced to. Many people only think of God seriously at a funeral. Statistics show tragedy almost always increases faith. Faith is the goal. Given the goal tragedy is necessary but is not usually a smart weapon but an area weapon. This was admittedly clumsy but I think you get the point.

Continued below:

 

[1robin]

An omnipotent creator God causes and conserves the existence of everything. And a benevolent, all loving God cannot send evil into the world. Those two sentences are analytic, and they are true because they cannot logically be false. The notion of God granting lesser beings an ability to oppose his will is not an attribute necessary to the concept of Supreme Being, and causing suffering contradicts his supposed benevolence. The existence of suffering and the granting of free will is entirely at odds with the conception of love as care and concern for the loved, a continuous, charitable, unconditional, affection for someone, which is deep, genuine, and unremitting.

A better word would be enable, not cause. No God, no choice does not mandate control of the choice it's self. Once we had rejected God he was justified in sending evil into the world. He could have killed all life in existence without violating his nature. Most do not remember that he is the lamb and the lion. Justice requires action against wrongs. No retribution, no justice. However you will have to clarify this "sending of evil" into the world. God did not send Adam or me a command to fail. We chose to and rightly ran afoul of a perfect God. Even given all the evil our actions warrant God did not leave us a slave to it. he paid the ultimate price to render it all moot in the end. This guarantees ultimate restitution and justice for anyone willing to grant obvious facts. He could have rightly damned us all without remedy but did not do so.

Every attribute we have is remitting, fickle, many times arbitrary, and does end. It also at times justifies the guilty and condemns the innocent. It is as if something we were given that was pure has been infected by our moral insanity. God's attributes are unremitting, are perfectly just, and reach a capacity we can only guess at in an eternal sense. This world is not God's eternal choice. It became a testing grounds for qualification to exist with all those attributes you mentioned as they should be, not as we practice them.


We have all of these things anyway. getting rid of God will only increase them and remove any hope of remedy. It is almost a symptom of our madness to eradicate the solution by stretching human contrived philosophy to it's breaking point.

The problem of evil allows for a god that does exist, but one that is not all loving. The fact that evil and suffering are caused and permitted on God’s terms demonstrates that moral codes are relative by his standards. Intentionally causing an innocent child to die a painful death is murder, regardless of the hand responsible.

All of these objections are countered by purpose. You must show a God is inconsistent with his revelation by the adopting of his purpose. Since all aspects of reality follow necessarily from purpose the only chance of contradiction is in purpose. We would save a lot of time discussing purpose alone instead of objections to deductive necessities given purpose. I still claim this is one big ole false optimization fallacy at it's core.

1. An all loving, all powerful, perfectly good God cannot be sometimes merciful, sometimes not.

Of course he can. If a lack of mercy is required by perfect justice he could do not other.

2. There is no mercy and perfect goodness where there is suffering.

NO beyond any other claim you have made this one is unknowable. You can't possibly know suffering is some kind of objective test of ultimate moral justification. It is an obvious fact suffering produces good and that certain actions merit suffering in a just system.

3. There is suffering

Therefore there is no all loving, all powerful, perfectly good and merciful God.

A conclusion derived from a false premise is of no use.

Premise #1 and #2 are self-evident (note the quantifier ‘All’ in #1). Premise #3 is the factual evidence, and from which the conclusion necessarily follows.

Was this your argument capable of judging God?

1. You have no idea if suffering is evil or not. You can't.
2. Only if God exists can any suffering ever be evil.
3. Whether it was evil or good depends on the moral justifications for allowing it and that requires the existence of what you deny to begin with.
4. What is actually good would almost certainly not be in general what a creature as fallible as we think it is.
5. It is no difference from ants telling Newton how to do calculus or a child telling a parent they are mean because neither have the necessary knowledge to accurately determine either.

You must have a God to have evil. The existence of evil is used constantly as evidence for God. The suffering of a biological anomalous bag of atoms has no objective moral significance. It requires a moral law to differentiate the two, this requires a moral law giver. A moral law giver is moral law. That is all technical necessity and not my main point.

My main point is that once purpose is allowed everything else is a necessity. You must show that purpose is contradictory to God's essence or character. I do not think a human can meaningfully even begin to do this. The effort seems hyper-trivial.



We have used quite a lot of tactics and words to express what we believe we have even gotten into a little theology. I however see we will always wind up at the same place. I will have reasons and competent scholars that justify my position and you to justify yours. It is at least an epistemological wash out. That is why I rarely use human contrived reasons alone to debate. I use them as support. For instance if we could prove that Christ did what is claimed in the bible then no amount of human opinion will make any difference. This is why I concentrate my discussions on claims like this and use philosophy and science to add weight. You seem to reverse this. Let me see if I can get you to switch gears.

I claim two things:

1. The Gospel explanation is by far the best explanation for the historical facts granted by most NT scholars regardless of the side they are on.

Plus

2. I claim that there exists hundreds of millions (and probably billions) of similar claims to personal experiences with God, plus millions that are of things the Bible posits as reality from the other side of the coin. Far too many to dismiss, neglect, or explain by any other means other than spiritual truth.

In summary I claim given just those two faith is more than justifiable outside an undeniable defeater.

 

[1robin]

I thought it was funny and cute.

You guys are easily impressed. What in the world was funny about it? I have no compulsion against admitting something was humorous regardless of source and have done so many times and am known for a good sense of humor as much as anything. I do not even see the potentiality for humor in it. It is just a rational absurdity with no punch line and no witty reference point. Of course humor is subjective but I do not even think that would explain it.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

You have certainly perfected self glorification.

No one is perfect. I'm just very, very, very good at it, is all.

If this was true why are you the only person in my entire life to consistently claim they do not understand the simple statements I make (regardless of irrelevant grammatical mistakes)?

I'm going to actually answer this one. For the lurkers mostly.

People go through their lives, especially their linguistic lives, assuming that they understand most everything, when they actually understand very little. I think it's because we all consider ourselves totally competent with language. Haven't we used it since our earliest babyhood? Don't we know what words mean? Of course we do. It's silly to think we have misunderstood the words said to us.

This is an easy hypothesis to test. Just ask ten people to paraphrase one of your statements. You'll be shocked at the things they'll answer. They'll be all over the board.

So the answer to your question is this: I am a little different from most people when it comes to extracting a person's meaning from his words. I tend to assume less and to ask more clarifying questions.

In other words, robin, others aren't really understanding you. They're just assuming that they understand you.

I know what the statement means. That is why I know it was devoid of sincerity, merit, and fails to supply humor.

Damn. I hate it when I'm a failure at supplying humor!

I am doing what is done in every classroom, every courtroom, and every formal debate I have even heard of. Giving expert opinion.

No, you're not. What you're doing is proclaiming that those who agree with you are the smartest, the best, the greatest minds in all the land. It's quite silly, which is why I just can't take it at all seriously.

It's profound arrogance by proxy, isn't it?

Which is why I giggle when you call me arrogant for doing the same thing back at you.

You of course do not find the experts opinion convenient so false claims to appeals to authority, flat falsely stating the use to which I used authority, and making satirical statements that are not.

Man oh man. That one needs to be framed.

Flat falsely stating the use to which you used authority?

Making satirical statements that are not?

Yo.

This is typical. All non-Christian / Christian miscommunications are the result of the Christian just being far too ignorant to see how smart the non-Christian is.

Don't mean to burst your bubble, but when I talk to you, I don't even think of you as a Christian.