God is evil, or likes it, or enjoys it whatever

[dastardly stem]

dastardly, if you go back and read my posts from time immemorial……you will see I’ve expressed my opinions on these questions and others. I’m not going to rehash here.

Do a search on the board and look up “anthropic” or “fine tuning” for starters.

I realize that there are arguments for and against but as I observe the world and its historical timeline and evolution I personally see purpose and creative genius behind the scenes rather than randomness and chaos.

The fact that you’re asking believers for proofs is proof, in and of itself, that you are looking for God on a silver platter. Someone to spoon feed you. That’s not the way it works. Other people cannot EVER prove God’s existence to you. It’s a personal endeavor/journey. One that we each travel alone walking in tandem with those that we have reason to trust.

Best wishes in YOUR continued journey to locate/find truth through the means that you have at your disposal and trust. Reason and earthly logic, in my opinion, will only take you so far.

Faith, again, is a hard but worthwhile road to take. It’s not for the faint of heart as I’ve said.

Regards,
MG

Yes, I seem to recall asking similar questions before and you attempting an escape by saying you’ve responded to people in the past already. I certainly can search to see if you’ve ever said anything relevant but sadly you reveal yourself here way too much showing me it’s likely not worth the bother (not to mention your penchant for evading and distracting at nearly every turn, after all I still don’t know what your posting has to do with the op).

Anyway:

Reason and earthly logic, in my opinion, will only take you so far.

…mg attempts to reason why reason isn’t good.
Sure, if you oppose reason and logic in a discussion, the discussion ends before it started. What other tools must we agree on if not reason and logic? If you’d answer that question you’d have to demonstrate your own inconsistency since attempting to reason with another is itself assuming reason and logic. And no offense, particularly since you embrace such irrationality, but it’s obvious why you refuse to respond, or discus, you seem to enjoy playing a game of pretending reason and logic only to drop the conventions when convenient. And you explicitly say that’s what you do right here.

I’m familiar with traditional arguments for god, and in terms of being logical or reasonable I find them lacking. To me it’s clear you’re saying you don’t have reason for your beliefs. It just happens to be convenient that others have posed bad arguments before and those tend to cover for your fear of reason. Not to be harsh but that’s understandable in a sense. If you really want to believe something any old argument will do.

[MG 2.0]

I’m familiar with traditional arguments for god, and in terms of being logical or reasonable I find them lacking.

I figured as much. Then, as I said, why would I spend the time rehashing what has already been hashed out by much better minds than myself…even though I’ve also given it my best shot at previous times on this board. It’s not hard to plug in anthropic and fine tuning into the board search bar.

Arguments for God will end up at a dead end with those that have found life more rewarding and meaningful without God.

Unless, of course, the arguments for God were somehow unavoidably persuasive. The silver platter God.

Regards,
MG

[Chap]

If you really want to believe something any old argument will do.

Or even mere assertion will also do the trick, it seems.

[Marcus]

Ok. what reasons do you rely on to believe there’s a god?. How do you define god? What/who is he? It seems to me you rely on assumption after assumption. Or rather you presuppose the belief. So I’d also be curious what level of probability do you put on god existing? How do you arrive at that probability?

dastardly, if you go back and read my posts from time immemorial……you will see I’ve expressed my opinions on these questions and others. I’m not going to rehash here.

Do a search on the board and look up “anthropic” or “fine tuning” for starters....

okay, but it's not going to go as well as you apparently think...

[november 2021]

Hi Res Ipsa, if you've spent any amount of time looking at the Fine Tuning Argument you are probably well aware that the opinions/evidence pro and con are going on day by day as we speak. I know you guys don't like me posting to sites because you think that it's more or less a way out of having to go through and explain everything from start to finish. And that's true. The fact is, if you haven't noticed, I'm a layperson and cannot explain scientific explorations in the same way that a scientist can. It's above my pay grade, but not theirs. Be that as it may, this site gives insights to both the arguments for and the arguments against Fine Tuning. If you want to sharpen your knowledge, I think you may find the back and forth worthwhile.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fine ... neTuneCons

You and I can both find rational and convincing arguments to believe what we will.

On my way to another universe to see and observe whether or not the cosmological constants and the laws of physics are the same as in our universe!

Back later! Ha ha.

Regards,
MG

MG, I think that's a cop out.

If you feel comfortable deploying the strong anthropic principle as an argument, you should understand it well enough to respond to counter arguments.

I am also a lay person. But the criticisms of the SAP aren't highly technical science issues. They're basic issues in reasoning.

At bottom, your use of the SAP is no different than concluding that the fact that I won the lotto today is evidence that somebody intended me to win the lotto today. Sure, it's prettied up with fundamental constants and scientific jargon, but that's really all it is. In fact, it's worse, because you are just assuming, based on no evidence whatsoever, that a bunch of mathematical relationships that we observe come with little knobs that would allow someone to assign them any value they choose (or that the values are random, like drawing lotto balls). But we don't know enough to make even a rational guess at how many different combinations of those numbers there could be. We don't know whether there is only one or a zillion.

But, given that we live in a universe and that we can observe its properties, the odds of the universe existing in a form that we can exist and observe are 100%. To conclude otherwise is to commit the lottery fallacy. (An exceptionally bad case, given that we don't know how many balls there actually are or how many are drawn or whether the process is random at all.)

You don't need any specialized scientific knowledge to pose a counterargument to any of that.

The other arguments I made above also require no special scientific knowledge. The first is your inconsistent treatment of three untestable theories: treating the one that gives you the answer you like and sneering at the other two.

The second is objecting to the obvious special pleading that, when examining intention, [human] life is all that matters. But that's just special pleading based on your desire to have a creator that intended to create you. When 99.999999999% of the universe is hostile to the existence of human life, it's irrational to claim that the universe was "designed" for human life to occur. Again, no special scientific knowledge required.

Underlying it all is a rat's nest of fallacious thinking. Jumping from "I don't know" to "God diddit" is always fallacious thinking. I don't care how many variations on SAP one can invent. It's the equivalent of saying "Since I don't have the evidence to figure out the answer today, I can make up whatever I want." Sure, you can do that. But you can't pass it off as rational.

And spare me the quotes from smart guys. Smart guys are just as susceptible to irrational thinking as anyone else.

and in response:

...If that's a cop out, so be it.

...Yes, I do have a predisposition to believe in God. I've said that a number of times. We each are invested in our own worldviews for various reasons. I'm sure that you would recognize that. Once you have invested a significant amount of time and energy in your worldview and you are living a certain lifestyle that brings you comfort and fulfillment, it's hard to change, right?...

is that last part your version of "the silver platter" god? Because it reads more like the irrationality of thinking sunk costs should influence one's decisions.

[dastardly stem]

I’m familiar with traditional arguments for god, and in terms of being logical or reasonable I find them lacking.

I figured as much. Then, as I said, why would I spend the time rehashing what has already been hashed out by much better minds than myself…even though I’ve also given it my best shot at previous times on this board. It’s not hard to plug in anthropic and fine tuning into the board search bar.

Arguments for God will end up at a dead end with those that have found life more rewarding and meaningful without God.

Unless, of course, the arguments for God were somehow unavoidably persuasive. The silver platter God.

Regards,
MG

If you don’t have a reasonable position then that is worth noting, MG. And I don’t mind believers believing because it suits them or they really want it or they feel better then n case there really is a god, but all of that is not good reason to support the claim and thus is unreasonable. If you approach the traditional arguments for god hoping for god or already thinking there’s a god then it appears any old argument will do. That is fine, for what it is, but it is not reason as you well note.

[Rivendale]

If you really want to believe something any old argument will do.

Or even mere assertion will also do the trick, it seems.

Or this.

Kerry Muhlestein: “I start out with an assumption that the Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon, and anything else that we get from the restored gospel, is true... Therefore, any evidence I find, I will try to fit into that paradigm."

[msnobody]

I’m always confused with threads like this. Is it about God or about God as known in Mormonism?

[dastardly stem]

I figured as much. Then, as I said, why would I spend the time rehashing what has already been hashed out by much better minds than myself…even though I’ve also given it my best shot at previous times on this board. It’s not hard to plug in anthropic and fine tuning into the board search bar.

Arguments for God will end up at a dead end with those that have found life more rewarding and meaningful without God.

Unless, of course, the arguments for God were somehow unavoidably persuasive. The silver platter God.

Regards,
MG

Persuasive arguments really only can make up part of a case. But if the arguments aren’t persuasive it doesn’t get us to the beginning of reasonable discussion. As you said reason and logic doesn’t work or get us there. I get the frustration of rehashing attempts at logic particularly when there are holes in the logic. It gets us nowhere when a believer assumes he’s right and thinks any old argument will do. Your continued silver platter comment sounds silly. It seems to concede there’s no argument worth considering and people ought to believe anyway. As it is faith, which you think is so hard, Is simply an attempt to replace reason and logic. Presupposing is, it seems, the only way to believe, correct?

[dastardly stem]

Or even mere assertion will also do the trick, it seems.

Or this.

Kerry Muhlestein: “I start out with an assumption that the Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon, and anything else that we get from the restored gospel, is true... Therefore, any evidence I find, I will try to fit into that paradigm."

Muhlestein’s comment remains a fine expression of honesty for a believers take. It also means as MG demonstrates, or demurs, human reason and logic doesn’t work in uncovering god or religious belief.

[dastardly stem]

I’m always confused with threads like this. Is it about God or about God as known in Mormonism?

The threads meant to discuss the belief of god, from any perspective.