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God complex
A god complex is an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility.
He should be more careful before his vengeful and paranoid god zaps him with a lightning bolt.
"I know objective morality exists because a book says that my God said that there is. There is no action so immoral I would not do if I believed that God told me to."
@ AJ777
Well I see I must have spanked you so hard you are acting like JNV3 and ignoring my posts. What's wrong? Have I come up with stuff you have no argument against? Hell, you never even read my first, second, or third posts. Why? Because you had no argument against them. Here are a few questions of mine you have been ignoring the last few pages.
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You have not responded about God's Nastiest Turd. You have not responded about The Obscenity of Christianity or how such an immoral monster such as William Lane Craig can exist?
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You still have not answered this:
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What is the ultimate source of Evil?
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What was there before God?
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But please answer my questions.
Do you torture your children by forcing the Bible down their throats? Do you torture your children by forcing them to believe in that immoral monster in the Bible? Do you torture your children by telling them they were born evil/sinful? Do you torture your children with the threat of Hell unless they behave as you tell them to behave instead of letting them be the children they are?
And if you have no children, please do not reproduce.
rmfr
Evil is the lack of good, it is not an object. In the Christian worldview God is the unmoved mover, the uncreated creator. So when you ask what was there before God the question is not coherent because you’re asking what was there before that which has always existed. In religion and politics it would be nice if we could have rational discourse free of demonizing and demeaning each other sir. Ad hominem attacks are beneath you. If you believe absolute truth doesn’t exist, why are you spending so much time and energy to “spank” me or prove me wrong. The very concept of an argument implies one view is true.
Morality is a matter of opinion, not of fact.
Observations about reality can be quantified to a degree of confidence, but not absolute certainty.
You have been unable in this thread to give any observations about reality that can be quantified to a degree of confidence which are relevant to your argument.
@ AJ777
First you still need to provide OBJECTIVE HARD EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE your Sky Faerie even exists before you can even begin to give it any qualities. Something you cannot prove to exist cannot be given any qualities.
And, was it not you who spoke these lies?
Please note the highlighted word above. Again, I ask, What was there before God? If everything, as YOU put it, has a cause, Then what caused your God to exist?
AJ777: "Ad hominem attacks are beneath you."
And where did I ad hominem in my post you responded to?
If you believe absolute truth DOES exist, then why are enduring so many "spankings" from everyone here besides myself that proves you wrong?
AJ777: "The very concept of an argument implies one view is true."
Yet, you have never even gotten close to proving yours. All of your arguments have been nothing more than pedantic, inane, asinine prosyletizations. At least all of our arguments have merit.
You must be practicing in the hope of becoming William Lane Craig, Jr. The most immoral monster to ever inhabit a Christian.
And you still have yet to address The Obscenity of Christianity.
You are becoming as bad as Breezy the Dodger. Wait... Don't tell me. You and Breezy are neighbors and he is using your account here to prosyletize? ;-P
rmfr
AJ777 "Evil is the lack of good,"
Rubbish, you really don't live within throwing distance of a dictionary do you, evil is a concept about types of behaviour.
adjective
1. profoundly immoral and wicked.
"If you believe absolute truth doesn’t exist, why are you spending so much time and energy to “spank” me or prove me wrong. "
He never said truth doesn't exist, or that objective truth doesn't exist. Do you really not understand the difference between calming objective truth exists, but absolute truth doesn't?
"Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits?"
You need to study some basics about epistemology.
Now why do you believe it is immoral to torture children, you seem determined not to say, why is that?
If morality is only opinion, why complain about Gods morals. Do you spend as much time supporting your favorite ice cream flavor? It’s non sense to claim that there are no moral standards like murder for fun is wrong and will always be wrong, no matter what the society or individuals or majorities opinions are. If the nazis had won WWII, would they have been morally right to murder Jewish people because the society and majority approved of it and likely still would today?
You were the one that started the thread.
You are still unable to understand that people exist for whom life is defined by what makes them individuals. You are still unable to understand that society's laws ideally represents what society desires them to be, and that naturally, the morals of a society or a time are never wholly in tune with an individual's own views.
AJ777, you asked, “If morality is only opinion, why complain about Gods morals. (sic)”
I’ve had discussions with folks about lots of fictional characters. This god of yours, though, is a character worth discussing because so many people organize their lives around it. Not only that, they want legislation based on it and want others to comply with the character’s rules.
"If morality is only opinion, why complain about Gods morals."
God's, and it's because you are claiming a vile barbaric and cruel book, filled with bigotry and prejudice and cruel violence, even towards children and babies, represents perfect morality. If decent people don't challenge your stupidity then we end up in a society that justifies such bigotry and prejudice and violence.
***YOU BELIEVE IT REPRESENTS MORALITY*** that's why we need to point out how vile and immoral it is.
"If the nazis had won WWII, would they have been morally right to murder Jewish people because the society and majority approved of it and likely still would today?"
No because murdering people is a vile pernicious act. Why do you think it was wrong, just because you are told it is in a book? Just doing what you're told without thinking is what "good" nazis did.
How does this speak to morality being objective or subjective?
I was answering your specific question "If morality is only opinion, why complain about Gods morals. Do you spend as much time supporting your favorite ice cream flavor?"
Not inflicting pain on others is of absolute importance to me, so it is natural that I would find dogma that teaches that eternal torture for most of humanity is acceptable to be a great danger to society.
In what way does the Bible teach that hell is a desirable outcome or acceptable. To the contrary it warns of the danger of eternal suffering, the natural consequence of unbelief. And anyway how can something that is non existent be a danger if the very idea of danger is a subjective truth? Your position is not coherent.
I believe that torture is always immoral. Thus when you say an omnipotent chooses to carry out torture, it is clear it considers torture to be a desirable and acceptable outcome.
A person cannot choose to believe something contrary to their natural inclination and their observation. It is immoral to torture someone for their honest beliefs, especially when you have created their natural inclination and the whole of their experience.
When people place no value on this mortal life, and consider their death as being infinitely more desirable, they are a great danger to society, especially if they believe any action is acceptable in their desire for nebulous infinitely big rewards and nebulous infinitely big punishments.
Societies that believe in this way are far more vengeful and violent in nature to more secular societies.
This is a straw man, the Bible does not condone, nor describe hell as a place of torture, but torment which is internal and self inflicted, Christianity places supreme value on this life, and sees it as a gift not to be squandered, as opposed to atheism which can provide no answers to meaning, or purpose.
A person can choose to believe anything they like, for example that God does not exist, but He is at the same time evil. Also in your case self defeating statements in order to support your worldview.
"The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth". Matthew 13:41-42
That is quite clear that it is Christ's angels on his behalf who sends people to hell, where they are tortured.
The Christian idea of life, for most people, is to be tortured for eternity.
For me, eternal torture would be the greatest bad imaginable: I'd prefer death to eternal torture, so perhaps in a twisted sense, Christianity does place supreme value on life, if not on quality of life.
The most peaceful societies very much have the emphasis on rehabilitation for criminals rather than punishment. And these societies did not even create the criminals in the first place. So it is difficult to see how the bible does not condone torture when the world's most peaceful societies have not only explicitly forbidden it, they have refrained from doing it.
Can you define what meaning or purpose Christianity gives to life in a way that is anything but redundant from a Christian perspective?
AJ777, you wrote, “...Christianity places supreme value on this life, and sees it as a gift not to be squandered, as opposed to atheism which can provide no answers to meaning, or purpose.”
‘Atheism’ doesn’t even try to provide answers to meaning or purpose! You seem to be confusing atheism with a person who identifies as atheist. A person can indeed do so.
Thu, 01/10/2019 - 22:47
AJ777 "the Bible does not condone, nor describe hell as a place of torture, "
Try again...have you even read the bible?
Matthew 25:41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, ***you cursed, into the eternal fire*** prepared for the devil and his angels."
Wow, you can hear the goal posts moving.
You ask a question, Cyber answers it, and then you ask how it answers something else. You really have no shame.
It answers the question you asked, not a straw man polemic you're adding after the fact.
@AJ777 I'm no intellectual, but from viewing this you seem to use the most abstract ideas to justify the existence of God, and then you proceed to bring him all the way into reality, going as far as making him Christian, and the Bible his defining work.
Or am I reading it wrong - Did you start with the Bible and belief in God without evidence, and are now working you're way back to the most abstract reaches where he attempts to hide?
@AJ777 believes it is acceptable to torture individuals for not believing in his god, but he has not yet given give one property that is unique to his god that is observable, whether to humans or to pet rocks.
There are many Christians who affirm the annihilation view, that unbelievers are destroyed, not tortured. This falls within accepted beliefs of Christianity. Other Christians believe in universal salvation. Does that help remove one of the issues you have with God? Jesus was observable as God incarnate, affirmed by biblical and extra biblical eye witness testimony which is direct evidence.
You were talking of objective morality before, now you are saying that your god has different views depending on who you ask.
You may think that unbelievers being destroyed rather than tortured is equivalent in value for an atheist to simply dying, but I find the explicit destruction of an individual without their permission to be savage.
I believe in following my informed conscience, rather than allowing myself to do actions I consider immoral. If I should be rewarded or punished for following my own informed conscience, it does not sound like I have any say in that. And whether or not the God exists has no bearing on my conscience. So I don't see why the alternative Christian view you present is more acceptable.
You still seem to mix up believe in the existence of things with virtue. There is no virtue in believing in things without evidence. Observation of phenomena only shows what the laws of nature permit: no observation of phenomena could show something to be supernatural.
Those different views are possible interpretations of theological questions. Only one is correct. If an alternative view like annihilationism is correct then eternal torment is incorrect. Some Christians share your opinion that God should and would not allow eternal torment.
“No observation of phenomena could show something to be supernatural”. Resurrection of a dead man? The existence of design in nature? The fine tuning of the universe? Etc... Christianity is not a blind faith as you suppose. Jesus said to believe in Him based on His works. If God exists he certainly has a bearing on your conscience as He created it and you.
So basically, "Objective morality exists, but it differs from person to person."
Anything that exists within nature happens within the laws of nature, otherwise they would not be possible.
If a person is truly dead, they cannot be resurrected.
Claiming that nature is designed is not falsifiable. There is no reason to think that something came from nothing.
It is foolish to say the universe is fine tuned, as though holes were designed for the puddles they hold.
Actually, Jesus in the bible actually specifically told his followers to tell no one of his alleged miracles (Mark 7:36), and told them those who believed without evidence were blessed (John 20:29).
"Christianity is not a blind faith "
Of course it is, you couldn't demonstrate a single piece of objective evidence for your belief a deity exists, just a plagiarised archaic first cause argument, that has long since lost all credence as it is so obviously flawed and irrational.
@AJ777
How do we have any idea about the objectivity or credibility of the witnesses you refer to?
Direct evidence? I think you should re-evaluate that statement.
Eyewitness testimony is a type of direct evidence sir. Yes they are credible witnesses. I suggest you read the books I mentioned.
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/resources/law_relate...
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