Religion

[G'day Mate]

I came across an interesting argument against those who claim their god is omniscient and omnipotent the other day. In the spirit of discussion I'm curious to see how it could be tackled. I imagine a devout monotheist would have to use free will to argue against it, but I would still say "perhaps, but couldn't he have done better?". Here's how it goes (in my words):

1. If a god is omnipotent, he is capable of doing some given thing
2. If a god is omniscient he will also know how to do the things he's capable of

Therefore, if an omnipotent, omniscient god decides to do something, it will happen.

So, if a god wanted to effectively communicate his message to us it would happen, yet there are several different monotheistic religions (whose devotees will often claim their god is omnipotent and omniscient) and those religions are further divided into countless sects with different doctrine based on different interpretations of what they believe to be their message from god.

What gives?

[Crazed_Insanity]

USA is a mononationalistic nation. We are not split into 50 different political groups, but mainly 2. Republicans and democrats.

Each of the two groups can also be split further, moderate Republican vs tea party trumpists. Similarly dems have a more progressive wing.

Each of these sub groups have a different versions or visions of America. So which america is the real America?

I guess founding fathers were just too stupid to communicate to American people properly what it really means to be Americans. Stupid dumb founding fathers. Clearly they didn’t know what the heck there were doing. How hard is it to just write stuff on a piece of paper so that people can clearly understand and not be confused?

So naturally we can safely conclude America doesn’t exist. Because if it really exists, Americans shouldn’t be this confused? Can’t possibly be the average Americans fault, right? Must be the dumb founding fathers who founded this nation ineffectively.

[G'day Mate]

So, I mentioned omniscience and omnipotence several times because they are fundamental to the argument. I've heard the term "foresight" used in reference to your founding fathers, but never "omniscience".

False equivalence or straw man? You choose.

[Crazed_Insanity]

But we’re talking about average Americans here. Do you really believe an all powerful being with the clearest message can be heard clearly by all Americans and nobody would get it wrong?

You are way over estimating average people not to mention under estimate the creator of this infinite universe.

With that said, although Americans can’t agree with each other, they are still Americans. Likewise, Jews, Christians and Muslims are all believers of God of Abraham. I do believe they are all children of God.

When we ourselves are imperfect and tend to misinterpret the message and tend to screw things up, does it really make sense to use our lame-ness to prove that the message isn’t clear enough or God is not omnipotent enough? Yeah, perhaps if God takes away our free will as you said earlier, then we could all just perform Gods perfect programming then naturally if there’s still a screw up, then yeah, it’ll be completely be God the programmer’s fault. Do you believe you are a preprogrammed robot unable to choose?

There’s no one like God, so it’ll be hard to find something equivalent. Jesus is not straw man, maybe a hangman on the cross? Anyway, yes, I choose Him.

[Dicknose]

Someone missed the point completely...

why isnt gods message clear - all powerful, it shouldnt be hard to give a clear message. Yes we are inperfect, but god should know that and allow for that. If god lets the message continue to be misunderstood then that is a choice. All powerful, all knowing - cant blame us for the mixup.
Or is it "we dont understand gods plan" as to why the message and even the existence of said god is so garbled. Is it meant to be confusing?

Personally I never understood why an all powerful god would want people to believe, worship etc. Seems very insecure.

[Crazed_Insanity]

The message has been preserved faithfully for thousands of years. We don't need Indiana Jones to dig it out and piece the word puzzle back together. Word of God has been faithfully preserve for all to read. Whether you want to read it or agree with it..., we have to free will to decide for ourselves. We also have the free will to interpret it however we want.

I find it funny that human tendency is to first blame the bible as confusing, but never bothered to look in the mirror... fine, if you're so smart, just look at an average american. Citizens of the greatest superpower of our current world. Aren't we confused? Are Americans confused by the Bible that's how we end up electing Trump?

Anyway, belief is important because without it, you might also be without hope… without hope, you just might get depressed…

Elon Musk 1st ‘believes’ that he could build a rocket, right? Without such belief at 1st, he’d be investing his money on something else and there’s be no SpaceX. Faith is the seed to lots of things!

Worship isn’t really about kissing God’s ass, but about being able to humble ourselves to do what’s right, rather than whatever our hearts desire. Not that all desires are wrong, Jesus desired to not die a horrible death in the cross. Ain’t nothing wrong with that. However he humbled himself to do what’s right and necessary in order to have a chance to save our sorry asses.

Anyway, you guys can continue to not believe or to blame God, but humanity’s sorry nature is pretty clear.

Average Americans clearly need a lot of help! If you guys think you’re doing just fine without Gods salvation, that’s cool too. You can still enjoy this life.

If you really want to go on and on, then you can’t do that without God.

[G'day Mate]

Billi - I was hoping for a better answer to be honest. Not exactly sure what, but I wasn't going after your personal beliefs. Perhaps you could begin by clarifying whether you believe god is omniscient and omnipotent and go from there?

DN - what flaws do you see in the argument?

[Tom Servo]

I know he'll get mad at me for chiming in, but I do want to say that comparing the word of God to the message of the founding fathers and, as such, subject to the same communication limitations as to seeing into the unforeseeable future, implies that God is dead and gone just like the founding fathers.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Swervo, can’t get mad at you when it comes to religious debates. It’s reasonable for you to want to criticize Jesus and Billi while unable to offer better alternatives. I can’t ask for too much… Things are different when it comes to other stuffs though. I do appreciate a lot of your travel and cooking tips and other constructive critical posts. I just wasn’t happy about the ones that criticized and scoffed at me at my expense while offering nothing interesting in return.

Anyway, There’s just no way I can prove to anyone Jesus is still alive, other than perhaps his spirit and the Bible we have… and church.

As for this nation, all we have left is our constitution and our government.

Even if we had some all knowing and all powerful founding fathers and just because they are dead now, we can still blame all the messes Americans have made so far on the founding fathers? That sounds perfectly fair and reasonable to you guys?

Imperfect founding fathers, then it’s reasonable for Americans to pick up their own responsibilities for the meses we made?

However, If God Himself founded america, then Trump is basically God’s fault? Americans can be totally irresponsible for anything? Whatever bad happens, it’s just God’s fault… and whatever good happens it’s because atheists are awesome?

What kind of logic are you guys using? I am the unreasonable guy?

[Crazed_Insanity]

Billi - I was hoping for a better answer to be honest. Not exactly sure what, but I wasn't going after your personal beliefs. Perhaps you could begin by clarifying whether you believe god is omniscient and omnipotent and go from there?

DN - what flaws do you see in the argument?

You only want to discuss religion with atheists?

Got it. I’ll try to keep Jesus out of the religious thread? Sound good?

God is love. Sorry that’s probably my personal belief too…

Can you clarify love? Can you debate or argue about love?

I’d like to see DN try!

All knowing and all powerful is just a lazy way for believers to not bother explaining I guess… don’t get tripped over it. Just as we don’t need to clarify exactly how big our universe is in order to enjoy looking at the stars, exploring it and living in it.

You can’t really clarify the universe only by discussions.

We need telescopes and rocket ships and sensitive sensors to test verify our discussion(hypothesis) in order to discover the truth in our universe.

As for Discovering God, how can we do that?

We need to take a leap of faith. Discussions alone won’t do much good. If taking a leap of faith is totally unreasonable step for you to take, I’d advise you to stop wasting time trying to find God. Because that’d be like Elon Musk talking about building rockets but never actually do it.

Seriously, which religion in the world requires no faith?

Anyway, if Billi is the problem and if you want him to stay out of the religious thread too, let me know. Maybe you atheists could come up with something reasonable about God. IMHO, God is already reasonable enough. It is us who are the unreasonable ones!

If you need me to explain, I pretty much have to refer to Bible and Jesus, I can't just make shit up. If you don’t want that, then I’ll just shut up.

Good luck finding the God you want.