On religion

[sasguru]

Well, he is a fatty. And fatties are evil.

[MyUserName]

The Son is as eternal as the Father.

So, logically, he could not have been sacrificed as he is eternal.

[pjclarke]

Suspending disbelief for the sale of argument and assuming for a moment that there is a God of some sort and He granted humanity free will, then it follows that evil must exist and provides an answer to the question of how a caring deity can permit suffering.

For free will to be meaningful, it has to be possible to choose to be good, and for this choice to be meaningful it has to be equally possible to choose to be evil, otherwise the decision to be good is meaningless, and for this choice to be meaningful there have to be people who have chosen to be evil. Ergo the existence of genuinely free will produces a more evil world; if you want free will, you have to put up with the occasional Holocaust, brought to you by a caring Deity.

This is all theory to me, BTW, I'm a Dawkinsite atheist myself.

[vetran]

so God is basically playing dice with our futures, I think I preferred Zeus's bunch.

[mudskipper]

It is is surely the height of arrogance assume your own beliefs are somehow superior to all others when there is no evidence whatsover for most of these beliefs.

I wonder how many people can say they are 100% sure there is/isn't a God. That to me seems arrogant.

But I think the point sas was making is why the Christian version (for example) is 'right' and the Muslim version is 'wrong'. There are so many variations on the God theme in different world cultures. The one commonality is the belief in a god (or gods) - this could be a fundamental element of human nature that looks for explanations, or could be argued to be evidence in favour of a god. If the latter, then (assuming Doog and Nat's version is right) it seems mighty harsh to condemn all devout Muslims to an eternity of brimstone and hellfire.

I genuinely find this fascinating - how so many people can be so sure they're right, when they believe different things.

[doomage]

Suspending disbelief for the sale of argument and assuming for a moment that there is a God of some sort and He granted humanity free will, then it follows that evil must exist and provides an answer to the question of how a caring deity can permit suffering.

For free will to be meaningful, it has to be possible to choose to be good, and for this choice to be meaningful it has to be equally possible to choose to be evil, otherwise the decision to be good is meaningless, and for this choice to be meaningful there have to be people who have chosen to be evil. Ergo the existence of genuinely free will produces a more evil world; if you want free will, you have to put up with the occasional Holocaust, brought to you by a caring Deity.

This is all theory to me, BTW, I'm a Dawkinsite atheist myself.

God didn't grant free will, we took it (Garden of Eden, tree of knowledge etc). And it pisses her off.

[speling bee]

Ah, so you're not as stupid as speling bee looks.

btw - speling bee, a question that is logically inconsistent (such as posited) is as much a logical fallacy as an ad hominem argument, you plank.

Not If God is outside logic.

[speling bee]

So, logically, he could not have been sacrificed as he is eternal.

Eternal and sacrificed are not logically exclusive.

[sasguru]

But I think the point sas was making is why the Christian version (for example) is 'right' and the Muslim version is 'wrong'. .

My point was more why Christians or Muslims (the "younger" religions) think they are "right" when Buddhism started over half a millenia BCE.
But your reading of it does raise the point: some Muslims seem even more certain of their beliefs than Christians do. None of these groups gives any justification of why they (or their holy book) is more correct than either, or in fact any other.

[speling bee]

My point was more why Christians or Muslims (the "younger" religions) think they are "right" when Buddhism started over half a millenia BCE.
But your reading of it does raise the point: some Muslims seem even more certain of their beliefs than Christians do. None of these groups gives any justification of why they (or their holy book) is more correct than either, or in fact any other.

But they are cretins.