Butterfly Christie
Agnostic Atheist
Hi there! Newbie here, and I was a Christian for 20 years. It wasn't really a one point that suddenly made me an Atheist. It was after years of careful study of religion and their arguments for their beliefs. I thought it would be interesting to see the Christian defenses for why they think its true, and the defense for why people think it isn't true. The Christian arguments didn't hold any water and the Atheist arguments made a lot of sense. After that I looked at other religions, and the non-believer arguments always made more sense. So I consider me an Atheist on every religion that I have studied so far. The second best reason was just the utter lack of evidence, but I shall present the one to you that took the cake.
Even going with the Christian perspective hypothetically, how do we know this is not just a very powerful being, beyond our understanding, who is trying to do something evil and is tricking us into thinking its a good god by giving us illusions that it is a good god, or a god at all, from it's tremendous power that would go beyond our ability to understand it? A very powerful being, who is beyond our understanding, would be very much capable of doing that. So asking us to believe in it and worship this biblical god when its not proving this to us doesn't make any sense. It is irrational for it to demand that we believe and worship it when we don't have a way of knowing this, or if it is telling the truth about itself. This God supposedly is transcendent and is seemingly all powerful from the human’s perspective at least.
In the bible it’s described to be omnipotent: (Matthew 19:26 - Matthew 28:18 - Luke 1:37 - 1 John 3:20 - Isaiah 14:24-27 - Revelation 19:6 - Isaiah 46:10 - Mark 10:27 - Luke 18:27 - Job 42:1-2 - Isaiah 55:11 - 1 Kings 8:27)
When something goes beyond the human minds understanding we can't know its full nature, thus we can't know its real place in the universe and its relation with it, thus we can't know if what its doing is right or if what someone describes about it is correct and so its not possible for us to truthfully believe it is what it says it is, or worship it.
In this case there would be no way to verify it's claims, because any evidence it would show us has the possibility of being just an elaborate and powerful illusion manifested from it's abilities that go beyond our understanding. This is the situation humans would be confronted with when we come across a very powerful being which is beyond our ability to understand at the moment.
I say at the moment because I don't like to put a limit on human discovery; what we can accomplish in the future, but this is a claimed god that is asking people in modern times, and people before our time to believe, who I'm very sure didn't have those kinds of capabilities. Otherwise people around thousands of years ago could have given us evidence of what makes up an omnipotent being, it's general nature, how they manifest into existence, and so forth, so we can know everything about it to verify what it tells us. This needs to be evidence, not claims and hearsay. This god would also have given the proof to every believer, before they were believers so they could rationally become believers. I'm not seeing this evidence being given out to unbelievers, being an unbeliever who has studied religion for a long time. If this god has not shown you that evidence, and the other things needed to confirm it's claims, then it is irrational to ask you to believe.
This would need to be evidence that can't be an elaborate illusion from a being so powerful it goes beyond our ability to comprehend it, and claims to be omnipotent. I can’t see how that kind of evidence would be possible......because if the being is omnipotent like the biblical god claims it is, that means anything could be an illusion, and we wouldn’t have a way of knowing if it is. Omnipotence means infinite in power. Something beyond our understanding is a direct contradiction to something that is evidential. So there is no way around it, either the god doesn’t exist, and this is a human error from someone living in those times, or a being with an incredible amount of intelligence that goes mbeyond the human understanding is giving us a proposition that isn’t possible for humans to rationally or sanely fulfill. If people believed in things without evidence, or logic like the proposed god is asking us people could in the same way believe in leprechauns, invisible purple unicorn hippos, deadly cults, etc. because those things have no evidence, or logic either. Which means the supposed god is opening it’s own people up to be dangerously manipulated. The first option I gave is extremely more probable.
Further, punishing us because we don't believe would be like punishing a disabled person wheel chair because they can't run a marathon, or punishing a dog because it doesn't know rocket science. Even closer to the point, the Christian God would be creating a disabled person and then punishing them for being disabled.
Humans do not know everything, when someone doesn't know something the possibilities are infinite on what it could be because the possibilities include things that we haven't thought of, or things that we are not capable of thinking of, things we can't comprehend.
I'm not saying that there definitely is something with an intelligence far beyond ours giving us illusions for reasons that only it can know, just that its in the realm of possibilities because there is so much about everything that we do not know. We can't assume anything that we don't know is true because then people would end up believing anything at the mercy of the human imagination. That's not how someone finds the truth, but at the same time the possibilities are infinite when it comes to things we don't know, including that. Even a persons alleged experience with the Holy Spirit is very much capable of being an illusion from something beyond our understanding.
[FONT="]..or anything else because we are talking about anything we can't or haven't thought of.
I've called this "The argument from Q" because of a character on Star Trek named Q who is this omnipotent alien who goes from planet to planet tricking the life beings on them into these different schemes.
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Even going with the Christian perspective hypothetically, how do we know this is not just a very powerful being, beyond our understanding, who is trying to do something evil and is tricking us into thinking its a good god by giving us illusions that it is a good god, or a god at all, from it's tremendous power that would go beyond our ability to understand it? A very powerful being, who is beyond our understanding, would be very much capable of doing that. So asking us to believe in it and worship this biblical god when its not proving this to us doesn't make any sense. It is irrational for it to demand that we believe and worship it when we don't have a way of knowing this, or if it is telling the truth about itself. This God supposedly is transcendent and is seemingly all powerful from the human’s perspective at least.
In the bible it’s described to be omnipotent: (Matthew 19:26 - Matthew 28:18 - Luke 1:37 - 1 John 3:20 - Isaiah 14:24-27 - Revelation 19:6 - Isaiah 46:10 - Mark 10:27 - Luke 18:27 - Job 42:1-2 - Isaiah 55:11 - 1 Kings 8:27)
When something goes beyond the human minds understanding we can't know its full nature, thus we can't know its real place in the universe and its relation with it, thus we can't know if what its doing is right or if what someone describes about it is correct and so its not possible for us to truthfully believe it is what it says it is, or worship it.
In this case there would be no way to verify it's claims, because any evidence it would show us has the possibility of being just an elaborate and powerful illusion manifested from it's abilities that go beyond our understanding. This is the situation humans would be confronted with when we come across a very powerful being which is beyond our ability to understand at the moment.
I say at the moment because I don't like to put a limit on human discovery; what we can accomplish in the future, but this is a claimed god that is asking people in modern times, and people before our time to believe, who I'm very sure didn't have those kinds of capabilities. Otherwise people around thousands of years ago could have given us evidence of what makes up an omnipotent being, it's general nature, how they manifest into existence, and so forth, so we can know everything about it to verify what it tells us. This needs to be evidence, not claims and hearsay. This god would also have given the proof to every believer, before they were believers so they could rationally become believers. I'm not seeing this evidence being given out to unbelievers, being an unbeliever who has studied religion for a long time. If this god has not shown you that evidence, and the other things needed to confirm it's claims, then it is irrational to ask you to believe.
This would need to be evidence that can't be an elaborate illusion from a being so powerful it goes beyond our ability to comprehend it, and claims to be omnipotent. I can’t see how that kind of evidence would be possible......because if the being is omnipotent like the biblical god claims it is, that means anything could be an illusion, and we wouldn’t have a way of knowing if it is. Omnipotence means infinite in power. Something beyond our understanding is a direct contradiction to something that is evidential. So there is no way around it, either the god doesn’t exist, and this is a human error from someone living in those times, or a being with an incredible amount of intelligence that goes mbeyond the human understanding is giving us a proposition that isn’t possible for humans to rationally or sanely fulfill. If people believed in things without evidence, or logic like the proposed god is asking us people could in the same way believe in leprechauns, invisible purple unicorn hippos, deadly cults, etc. because those things have no evidence, or logic either. Which means the supposed god is opening it’s own people up to be dangerously manipulated. The first option I gave is extremely more probable.
Further, punishing us because we don't believe would be like punishing a disabled person wheel chair because they can't run a marathon, or punishing a dog because it doesn't know rocket science. Even closer to the point, the Christian God would be creating a disabled person and then punishing them for being disabled.
Humans do not know everything, when someone doesn't know something the possibilities are infinite on what it could be because the possibilities include things that we haven't thought of, or things that we are not capable of thinking of, things we can't comprehend.
I'm not saying that there definitely is something with an intelligence far beyond ours giving us illusions for reasons that only it can know, just that its in the realm of possibilities because there is so much about everything that we do not know. We can't assume anything that we don't know is true because then people would end up believing anything at the mercy of the human imagination. That's not how someone finds the truth, but at the same time the possibilities are infinite when it comes to things we don't know, including that. Even a persons alleged experience with the Holy Spirit is very much capable of being an illusion from something beyond our understanding.
[FONT="]..or anything else because we are talking about anything we can't or haven't thought of.
I've called this "The argument from Q" because of a character on Star Trek named Q who is this omnipotent alien who goes from planet to planet tricking the life beings on them into these different schemes.
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