Anti-Darwin 'Expelled' Film, Atheist Saboteurs Clash Ahead of Release

dude »

Fri Apr 11, 2008 8:14 pm Agree: 0   Disagree: 2

cont from previous post due to 3000 character limit...I am sorry that you take offense with the children analogy but if there is a God that is what we are in comparison. So once again if I have a young child with a metal implement playing around an electric outlet and I warn that child that if he sticks it into the outlet he shall surely die and do nothing to interfere with that childs freewill and it is killed I am covered by your statement. I have warned the child of an impending doom that he has nothing other than my comments to base an understanding on and I have used simple language the child can understand so the child is the guilty party here, right? That is the basic argument you use here as well.

Anti-Darwin 'Expelled' Film, Atheist Saboteurs Clash Ahead of Release

dude »

Fri Apr 11, 2008 8:13 pm Agree: 0   Disagree: 2

Zenodaddy stated
"Dude,

'A perfectly just man who had the power to intercede would not allow small children to be raped and murdered if he had the power to intercede.'

Such a flawed argument. Always using children as the example for how bad things can get. Children being raped and murdered is horrible, I agree. I wish that no child would ever face this kind of thing, yet, where is your story about parents killing their children or the mom's who choose to murder their child before they are even born?

Bad things do happen to people all the time. When people, who have free will and choices to make, do these types of things, they get what is coming to them. To say that bad things happening to decent people (notice how I did not call them 'good') calls for the non-existence of God leaves out the other side of the equation... the evil itself.

To have evil you must have an originator of evil, and to have good you must have an originator of good. We each have the capacity to do either, most of us choose the latter in various degrees. Sure, Sure... we give to those in need, we help those around us every once in a while, but these are generally done not to help the other person, but to make ourselves feel better somehow.

This is where free will comes into play. We have a choice, each of us. This is called Freedom. We have the Freedom to do good, or the opposite. We have the same choice to turn to God or to reject Him. If God interceded in everything and caused everything to not happen that would happen none of us would have a choice and none of us would learn from our experiences.

Using children is a low blow. No sane person wants bad things to happen to children. Yes, God sees all, hears all, and guess what... experienced all. The same way God doesn't shield us from everything is the same way we cannot shield our children from everything, even when they get older.

I suggest you read, 'Mere Christianity'... it answers this accusation and many more. To recognize evil and yet reject the good is just asinine"



Oh please, zenodaddy, The argument is not flawed. You have not refuted it but chose to focus on something else, that humans act human and exercise freewill. So let me refute the idea that the divine will not impact humanity's freewill. BTW, I am copying an argument from Ebonmusings, as it counters the "freewill argument" in a nicely concrete form. Actually I will have to hotlink due to the 3000 character limitation. http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/divineblackmail.html cont...

Anti-Darwin 'Expelled' Film, Atheist Saboteurs Clash Ahead of Release

dude »

Thu Apr 10, 2008 8:56 pm Agree: 1   Disagree: 1

you can add that in as well but the result is the same. A perfectly just man who had the power to intercede would not allow small children to be raped and murdered if he had the power to intercede. If such man had the knowledge and ability to intercede and did not he would be an accessory just as guilty as the perpetrator. A perfectly just god, if omnipotent has the ability to intercede no matter the circumstance. The fact that he does not makes him unjust and and an accessory. Your next argument will probably be one of the following 1. it is all part of god's plan 2. the child is better off where ever they are 3. who are we to question god 4. it is all a test by god or one of hundreds of other flawed arguments. There are rebuttals to each of them.

Anti-Darwin 'Expelled' Film, Atheist Saboteurs Clash Ahead of Release

dude »

Thu Apr 10, 2008 6:08 pm Agree: 0   Disagree: 1

Exercising a little logic here.

Assumption (1): God exists.
Assumption (1a): God is all-knowing.
Assumption (1b): God is all-powerful.
Assumption (1c): God is perfectly loving.
Assumption (1d): Any being that did not possess all three of the above properties would not be God.
Premise (2): Evil exists.
Premise (3): An all-knowing being would be aware of the existence of evil.
Premise (4): An all-powerful being would be able to eliminate evil.
Premise (5): A perfectly loving being would desire to eliminate evil.
Conclusion (6): Evil does not exist. (from (1),(3),(4),(5))
Contradiction: But evil does exist. (from (2))
Conclusion (7): There is no being that is all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfectly loving. (from (2),(3),(4),(5))
Conclusion (8): God does not exist. (from (7),(1d))