fundamental suppositions of God that are absurd

[_KevinSim]

Sethbag, those are a good set of criticism to my mind. I am aware that each has been promoted by people. As a believer in God I see these suppositions to be about God not of God.

Once one comes to the realization that God - any god - is a pure product of the human mind, and nothing more, the suppositions listed by Sethbag's human mind do indeed become the suppositions of God.

DrW, how have you come to the conclusion that any God is such a product? I can see how you might come to the conclusion that most deities are, but saying that any deity is is saying that the idea of God itself has inherent problems, and I don't think that's been demonstrated yet. In fact, I'm not entirely sure anybody's defined God yet; how can a concept have inherent problems when nobody's defined what it means?

Kevin,

Why do you think it is (in your mind, at least) that "God" has not been adequately defined? If you think about it, such a claim in itself should be good evidence that God is purely a product of the human mind.

Why is it that God remains so ill defined in your mind?

God is perfectly well defined in my mind; I just see no reason to believe God is well defined for the purposes of our discussion. To say that all instances of God are products of human imagination is like saying all instances of Ublek are products of human imagination. Until we understand what Ublek means, that would be a pretty unfounded assertion.

Do the stark differences between the God of the Old Testament, and the God of the New Testament, and the God of Joseph Smith, and the God of the RCC, not give you a strong indication that all of these Gods sprang from human minds molded by the time and culture in which they existed?

Not really. So God has revealed Himself in different ways to different people; so what? That doesn't make Him of necessity the product of people's minds.

The fact of the matter is that there are some people who look at God in an entirely different way from how critics like you look at God, who have thoroughly thought through their beliefs, and have found resolutions to all the criticisms raised.

Just because some folks are able rationalize all of the inconsistencies, violations of physical law, twisted logic and failed reason inherent in believe in God, or can otherwise convince themselves of the existence of a magical being who lives in the sky, it does not mean that such a being exists outside of their (or your) imagination.

You didn't say that the arguments of people who believe in God don't "mean that such a being exists outside of their ... imagination"; you said that all perceptions of God are the product of their imagination; there's a significant difference between those two statements.

Can you really say, with a straight face, that of all of these Gods and demons generated by millions of minds over hundreds of thousands of years, the particular one that exists in your mind is the only one that also exists in the external physical world?

I define God pretty broadly, so yes, in fact, I can. But this isn't relevant to the point I was trying to make. I didn't object to you saying my God doesn't exist in the "external physical world"; I objected to you saying that we could be sure that any idea of God doesn't reflect someone who exists in the external physical world.

[_KevinSim]

What you're saying is our responsibility in countering the myth-makers is to spin a more plausible myth. That right there is absurd.

It is a common tactic both MG and Kevin employ, to wit, asking others to provide better explanations for assumptions they themselves are presenting.

What happens is people, like in the OP, say that the idea of God doing what Latter-day Saints say God has done, is absurd. If God were real, God would have done it in a very different way, they say. In such a discussion it's perfectly reasonable to ask what that way would have been.

[_Themis]

You're right. We are left to determine whether or not what we believe/practice is of God or man. God has promised, however, that His spirit can help us along the way. But we can only determine what that spiritual guidance...if it comes, is for ourselves ...not someone else.

You bring up another one of the absurdities for seth's list of absurdities. It is absurd to think the God of the universe would use feelings and thoughts in our heads as a way to communicate his will. It ignores the fact we can produce feelings and thoughts in our heads by our selves.

I'm flattered. But as you know, in the world according to Themis, I'm somewhat of a nincompoop when it comes to really having anything to say that is not at its core...bad thinking/reasoning.

I don't mean every idea, but many of them that revolve around problematic areas of LDS truth claims. The problem is how you approach the subject. Some members are convinces they know the church is true from the spirit so they will always approach it from the POV that it is true. This is why we get such bad reasoning. The reasoning has to always have Joseph as prophet in the end.

The more mature and enlightened member has come to the realization that the spiritual experience is far to subjective to really be trusted as coming from some invisible being. They realize it may be likely self produced, and while still believing, they will approach new information from a different POV. A POV that is looking at all the possibilities including Joseph was a fraud and not a real prophet. The one possibility that is not on the table of the member who is convinced their spiritual experience must have come from God and that they have the right interpretation.

This way we can look at all the claims to see if they fit a fraud or not. It's not about looking at their personal faults, but whether their supposed claims from God hold water. I brought up a few, but there really is a lot more. How about that adamic language, GoE in Missouri, or even Adam actually existing. I remember Nevo saying figures like Adam, Noah, Moses, Abraham needed to exist or they would do great damage to Joseph being a prophet. Made me wonder if he was a closet unbeliever since it is obvious that Adam and Noah were not real people. Joseph just liked making things up to much.

[_KevinSim]

It's not that Jesus suffered because you suffered, Fetchface. Jesus suffered so you wouldn't have to suffer. As I said in a recent post, for significant periods in my life my conscience tormented me for things I've done wrong in my life. Then I thought that if my faith in Jesus meant anything at all, it meant that I could get past that torment. I didn't want Jesus' agony to have no effect in my life, so every time my conscience tried to torment me after that, I realized that Jesus had done my suffering for me, and my conscience let me be. It's been years since I've even thought seriously about my prior misdeeds.

Kevin, please forgive me for what I'm about to say, because I don't really want to denigrate what you are relating, as it's obviously of great personal importance to you.

Do you remember in the Dumbo movie from Disney when Dumbo was falling, and realized he didn't need the feather to fly after all? Once he realized that, he stopped falling, and flew all over the place - and he didn't have the feather!

You imply that thinking about Jesus' suffering and death were the only thing that helped you overcome your guilt for your past mistakes. What if Jesus did not in fact suffer and die for you? What would that imply? To me it would imply that you found a way to mitigate your suffering, even if that way involved belief in something that is not true. In other words, you figured out a way for yourself to solve your guilt problem. And if you could find one way, you can probably find another, without having to resort in believe in mythology.

That's certainly a possibility. But let's replace Dumbo falling and the magic feather with someone experiencing pneumonia and penicillin. Does it make sense to stop believing in the magic feather, when in actuality the feather is a drug that medical professionals have run rigorous tests on and have determined that is a necessary ingredient to fight the illness?

By the way, don't worry about denigrating what I've been relating; I've got a pretty thick skin.

[_KevinSim]

I say that God would forgive the loan, if it were as easy as that. God isn't dealing with Her/His own sense of justice; God is dealing with each individual's sense of justice, and it's a lot harder to get each of us individually to forgive that person's self than it is for God to forgive us by God's self.

I drank coffee today. Quite a lot of it, actually. Maybe too much, who knows? According to the LDS church, what I did was a sin. According to you, my conscience will torture me until I accept that today's coffee drinking has been atoned for by the torture and execution of a Palestinian itinerant preacher/probable revolutionary back around 33 AD.

I know you won't believe me, but my conscience is totally clear about this. I assure you that I do not need to invoke another person's death as the solution to the "problem" of my having drunk coffee today.

No, I believe you. I'm not talking about drinking coffee. I'm saying there are things you and I have done in our lives that you and I feel guilty over. It doesn't have to be coffee. And I speculate that what we may be able to put aside (at least temporarily) in our lives, will come back to haunt us after we've died and all we can do is sit around thinking how much we messed up our mortal lives.

You said that you'd be perfectly willing to leave the LDS church if it were not true, and then you seem to be invoking the fact that you haven't left it yet as somehow proof that it must be true.

Oops! Sorry; I didn't mean to imply that.

[_Themis]

I'm not sure I understand this metaphor. Bazooka, could you elaborate? You're right that I don't like the alternative to the existence of God, but the only alternative to that alternative is the existence of God. There are many alternatives to Cadillacs, not just Fords.

This is the same problem I talked to MG about. You refuse to consider this alternative the same as many members refusing to consider the alternative that Joseph was a fraud.

[_mentalgymnast]

Abandoning belief in God does not have to lead to an unproductive, hedonistic life.

I'm not arguing that at all. When I did my run yesterday I listened to the first part of this podcast:

http://mormonstories.org/carrie-sheffie ... -and-more/

Carrie is a good example of a person who has left the faith but has not left moral/ethical behavior behind. I'm sure she's not alone.

Regards,
MG

[_Themis]

What DrW said goes way beyond "not believing things for which there is a major lack of evidence." He made statements about "any" deity at all.

Actually he didn't. He is just not going to be,lieve in any deity for lack of evidence. This is the only reasonable choice. I suspect he does the same for demi-Gods, pixies, Bigfoot, thetons, etc. I suspect you do for most.

I just don't see how DrW can be certain that any deity is a product of human creativity, without appealing to something inherent in alleged divinity, and he definitely didn't appeal to something inherent in alleged divinity.

HuH? You are not making sense. You are again making an assertion about human creativity that you have no idea about. It's just what you want to believe. Dr. W is just taking the reasonable position from a lack of evidence while you are taking to unreasonable position for a huge desire to believe it. I suspect his high degree, not absolute, of certainty is from looking at all the evidence humans give us about them probably making things up. Humans want answers so humans have been making them up for as long as humans have been walking the earth.

[_Sethbag]

"KevinSim said: "God is the personification of our own individual senses of right and wrong."
This is probably the single truest thing you've ever posted on this board, Kevin, though I'm not convinced you really understand why.

Sethbag, go ahead and educate me!

God is simply the attribution given by people to lend authority to whatever they happen to think anyway. Wonder why there's so many different god beliefs? It's because God is a made up concept, and everyone's got their own different version of it imagined in their heads.

[_huckelberry]

I drank coffee today. Quite a lot of it, actually. Maybe too much, who knows? According to the LDS church, what I did was a sin. According to you, my conscience will torture me until I accept that today's coffee drinking has been atoned for by the torture and execution of a Palestinian itinerant preacher/probable revolutionary back around 33 AD.

I know you won't believe me, but my conscience is totally clear about this. I assure you that I do not need to invoke another person's death as the solution to the "problem" of my having drunk coffee today.

Sethbag, you choose a very odd example. I do not think coffee is a sin, I would bet you do not either. I do not know if you would think differently about a real sin but the experiment in thinking about it would probably be more meaningful if real sin was under consideration. Would it be any different to consider an individual coming to the realization that in a moment of carelessness and or anger they caused the death of an innocent child or perhaps a brother in arms or perhaps a marriage, even a foundation of trust in a relationship?

I think we all know that the atonement does not simply make the real injuries of real sin vanish. I do believe it is a link to shared forgiveness which is a fuel needed to rebuild lives. The difficulty I see in making a dogmatic formula for what the atonement is and how it works is that it may work differently in different relationships. It may well have multiple meanings.