41

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Atheism vs. religion

« on: June 03, 2014, 07:33:40 PM »

There is nothing intrinsic to a television that makes it great. Rather the reverse, since it can break or malfunction. The same would apply to a football player, subject to injury as he is. God is the most perfect being.

There's nothing intrinsic to a god that makes it great either. I have read about many imperfect and seriously terrible gods. Some of which are explicitly mentioned in the bible. Which brings to mind another question - if the bible is from the god Yahweh, how do we know it's not just propaganda for Yahweh?

42

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Atheism vs. religion

« on: June 03, 2014, 07:00:27 PM »

Phrased incorrectly like that, it isn't an argument. Here is the proper phrasing. Premise 1: I can conceive of a Being a greater than which cannot possibly be conceived. Premise 2: Existence is greater than non-existence. Conclusion: God exists. & no, the argument does NOT hold for large tvs, or stereos, or what have you. Such things are not the greatest Thing. Only God is that.

First, I don't see why this argument applies only to gods and not other things. Since existing in my living room is greater than existing in anyone else's living room, the greatest possible TV set should be in my living room. I mean, it's OK, but...

Second, the greatest possible God I can conceive of also makes his existence plain to everyone and appears regularly on the news in person. He also doesn't require gratuitous suffering. So why doesn't that god exist?

Third, why would human conception of Him have anything to do with his actual existence in the first place? Since presumably He created us and everything, there was a time when there was there was no one around to conceive of him. Therefore the concept of the greatest God and the actual existence of such a God can't be related.

43

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Atheism vs. religion

« on: June 02, 2014, 11:50:52 PM »

God is of course omnipotent, omnibenevolent, & omniscient. The question, however, is illogical & solipsistic. 'Can God create a rock that is too heavy for God to lift?' is like saying that someone is a married bachelor. The question, like the phrase, is a contradiction in terms, & therefore has no connotation in English (or any other language).

Alright, we'll ignore the question since you've admitted it is beyond your ability to grasp.

If God is omnibenevolent, which loosely means "Good guy all around ", then why has He commited such foul acts in the Bible? I'll give you one example: the flood. He actually attempted to kill everyone on Earth (of course there is no evidence for this Flood ever happening, but we'll ignore that part as well for now) and He had no qualms about doing it.

What was the point of this? God got upset that the beings he created were doing evil things (keep in mind, he programmed them to do evil things in the first place via "free will") and wanted to kill them all. That's the bottom line. No "benevolent" ruler murders his own subjects.

"Yahweh decides to flood the earth because of the depth of the sinful state of mankind."

Exodus 15:3 The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name.
Exodus 22:20 He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed.


Your God would make a lot more sense if you stopped calling him benevolent, because he's clearly not. He's actually more malevolent than most deities.

All the murder and mayhem is for a good cause, don'cha know. It all works out for the best at the end of time. 

I mean, when you have guys like William Lane Craig spinning the slaughter of the Amalekites (sp?) down to the last child as being ultimately to their benefit as the innocent would immediately go up to heaven, how do you even argue against that? Just getting into an argument with someone who can take that position with a straight face is insanity. Atheism vs. religion? Maybe the only the only reasonable response to the question is "no thanks".

44

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Atheism vs. religion

« on: June 02, 2014, 06:47:53 PM »

Lets see. The concept of blasphemy is the idea of insult to deity. Ergo, the concept has meaning. As far as seeing the face of God & living, what does being all-loving & yet so powerful that one can't be looked @ directly have about it that is so hard to understand?

The concept of blasphemy makes no sense. What actions of a few monkeys on a tiny backwater planet like Earth could possibly insult the creator of the entire universe? If he's all powerful, then surely he has the ability to not be insulted by anything. If I could change one thing about myself, surely it would be to not give a damn about what anyone else said or did to me. Is it possible that God could lack this ability?

As far as not being able to look at God directly, it seems to me that has a lot more to do with a human inability to comprehend infinity than with some property of an alleged all-powerful, infinite being.

45

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Ask a Flat Earth Theorist Anything

« on: May 30, 2014, 07:57:17 PM »

Welcome, Shmeggley. I see you've found another site to spout your round Earth propaganda.

How is that working out for you?

Thanks, and I see you're spouting the same nonsense here as over there.

It's kind of dead here right now in the upper fora so far as I can tell, but I haven't been here long. I kind of missed the whole schism event, as I took a break from FES for several months, right around the time the split started I guess.

46

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Ask a Flat Earth Theorist Anything

« on: May 30, 2014, 12:16:58 AM »

We needed another one of these threads, and the upper fora need more FET focused content.  Ask, and I shall endeavor to enlighten.

A long standing question I have that's never been answered sufficiently:

How does FET explain how stars appear to circle around a central point in the sky, in opposite directions depending whether you are North or South of the equator?

With respect for the question and effort in posing it, I offer the following replacement.

In both the "mono-pole" and "bi-pole" models of FET, please explain how every observer, not on either pole, simultaneously see the celestial objects, in general, rotate as though on a sphere with an axis co-linear with the RE axis; that is, in shorter circles from the Celestial Equator toward the both poles and around the nearer pole. The basic period of this rotation is 24 hours. The apparent motion of each object is at a constant speed, east to west.

That's what I meant to say.

47

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Ask a Flat Earth Theorist Anything

« on: May 29, 2014, 11:36:13 PM »

We needed another one of these threads, and the upper fora need more FET focused content.  Ask, and I shall endeavor to enlighten.

A long standing question I have that's never been answered sufficiently:

How does FET explain how stars appear to circle around a central point in the sky, in opposite directions depending whether you are North or South of the equator?

48

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Ask a Flat Earth Theorist Anything

« on: May 29, 2014, 11:33:15 PM »

I think the explanation of gravity is that the flat earth moves upwards at 9.8ms^-1 or something along those lines. (Which makes no sense as velocity is not the same as acceleration- which is caused by a force- yep gravity)

Under the UA theory, the Earth is not moving at a constant velocity, it is accelerating at ~9.8m/s^2 which would have the same effect as gravity.  No one said it was moving at a constant velocity.

That, of course, is incorrect. On a RE, gravity has a detectable and expected radial nature. Einstein's EP applies only to a point, not a surface.

At every spacetime point in an arbitrary gravitational field, it is possible to chose a locally inertial coordinate system such that, within a sufficiently small region of the point in question, the laws of nature take the same form as in unaccelerated Cartesian coordinate systems

Kind of funny that you go to a website about Aether to try to teach us FE'ers about gravity.  Ironic maybe?

Pretty funny how an FE'er will declare a website to be "about" a word that occurs nowhere on the site except in the URL.