Well, denying that God is omnibenevolent is certainly one way out of the dilemma, but I’m sure Damien and most other Christians are not ready to concede that. Also, I mentioned that the Biblical account of God is inconsistent. You bring up just one of those inconsistencies.

As they say, kill a man and you are a murderer, kill ten and you are a serial killer but kill 32.9 million and you are a god.

If I were to suddenly seek god, I would most likely go along the gnostic way where the biblical god is merely one small god, a demiurge. Messed up little twerp who has no idea what god wants but is all too eager to enforce his contradicting ideas of right and wrong.

sid wrote: (…snip…) Unless I’m misreading this this is a very relativistic. Either God exists or He doesn’t - what I believe won’t change that.

If people are using science to attempt to disprove your faith the best way to counter that is with science.

Actaully, that was me, but no prob. My point was, that nobody is using science to attack religion in itself. Nobody can rightfully say “there is no god because of this and that” but what I often hear is “Your argument that God exsists because of creation, is wrong because of this and that” There is a massive difference between the two.

the chances of those cells all becoming so immaculately together by themselves would be pretty miraculous. I was saying that it was evidence for design, and thereby a designer.

No, it jsut shows the “experiment” has to be done many, many times. which is something the universe is a great place for.

Unfortunately did we mess things up and, thereby, lost that control. Our rebellion not only affected our nature, it affected everything that was under our influence.

But, if there is an all knowing, all caring God, would he not have been able to prevent us from doing that? Even if you argue free-will, then we could still have been made free will, but not so that we would have caused the fall. This is still a circular argument.

As for natural suffering I’m afraid that I’ll have to call up the Bible, but, as we’re assuming God’s existence, I’m sure you won’t have a problem with that.

For the time being, I have no problem with assuming that God exists (though I’m still interested on your defense of ID) and focusing on debating the nature of God. I do have a problem with assuming the Bible accurately describes God. It is circular reasoning to use the Bible as a defense for the Bible’s description of God.

So, basically, we have suffering and evil because of The Fall. The claim, then, is that natural disasters are our own fault. This smacks of blaming the victim, if you ask me. I find it unreasonable to lay the blame for all the famines, hurricanes, plagues, birth defects, and cancers entirely at our own feet. Worse yet, this still contradicts the Bible’s version of God. If God were omnipotent, then God would have been able to create us with freewill in such a way that we would choose not to rebel. If God were omniscient, God would know that the way he created us would result in evil/suffering. If God were omnibenevolent, God would not allow the evil/suffering from occurring if God could.

Take, once more, the particular example of natural disasters. Did God not know that we would rebel and loose control of natural forces? Did God not have the power to regain control of natural forces after we dropped the ball? Did God not care that our failure would result in immeasurable sums of suffering? Again, we still have the same dilemma. According the the Biblical description of God, He should have the power, knowledge, and love to prevent all suffering and evil that wasn’t a direct result of our own freewill.

I still couldn’t get the link to work. I have attended a similar debate at a philosophy conference several years ago. I cannot remember who represented the atheist view point, but it I do remember it was a physicist that was very intelligent, but had almost no charisma and poor debating skills. Representing the theistic side was the well-spoken, charismatic Alvin Plantinga. Dr. Plantinga won hands down, in my opinion, but he was not defending the existence of Bible-God, but of an Ultimate Cause. His social skills played no small part in his victory.

Oh right, don’t know why that would have been. I hope this one, too works http://www.sermonaudio.com/playvideo.asp?ID=82106201831&sourceID=ibd. I probably shouldn’t have given you that link, watching it again I noticed that his arguments are a bit straw-ry. The link I just gave you should work, I checked, if not there’s something up with your computer. It’s basically a debate between an atheist and a Christian on neutral turf. The video must have been produced in the 70s or something – the presentation will make you smile!

‘You can’t defend the three aforementioned traits of God by invoking the additional traits of justice and the ability/desire to plan.’
‘You are assuming that God is omnific (all-creating) and that God has a purpose in mind without demonstrating either.’

The problem is that these traits were separated in the first place. When you discuss why somebody/thing would do something/not do something you need to take into their whole personality/all their traits.

‘This only addresses human caused suffering. Clearly, creating a world without natural disasters would have no impact on freewill. Why, then, do we have natural disasters that kill millions?’

As for natural suffering I’m afraid that I’ll have to call up the Bible, but, as we’re assuming God’s existence, I’m sure you won’t have a problem with that.
Genesis 1:26 says “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth,”; God created man with the purpose of rule over nature. The particular words I want to highlight are “over all the earth”. Before we rebelled – whether you take the literal interpretation or not – everything was totally fine; we were able to rule the earth so that there wouldn’t be these disasters. Unfortunately did we mess things up and, thereby, lost that control. Our rebellion not only affected our nature, it affected everything that was under our influence.
I would say that if God did leave it like that – leaving the world fallen, despite having the power to rescue it – then yes there would be a problem. Of course that’s the difficulty atheists have – if you dismiss Jesus, forgiveness for sin and the promise of new heavens, new earth then He has done nothing. So that question is one that I can answer to you now, but one which might not make acceptable sense for you until you accept the whole of God’s plan.

‘Lastly, I didn’t find your comment angry at all. In fact, you’ve been downright polite. Please don’t be too afraid to use strong language. As long as we refrain from name-calling, I don’t mind a heated debate.’

I won’t do to much name calling…… sid

Have a great weekend!

But before you can say this or that about god. Demonstrate that he exists. If you cannot demonstrate that god exists arguing that he is just or has polka dotted wings and is a big tipper at the casino is just pilling fantasy on top of fantasy.

Unfortunately, the first link you provided didn’t work. The second one did, and I listened to it. He’s a decent philosopher, but a dreadful scientist. He doesn’t understand even the basics of the scientific method. All of his anti-evolution arguments are straw men and I’ve heard them all before. He had not one single credible or new critique. It’s sad that people take his ideas seriously. The end of his interview was downright insulting. His teaching others his irrational fear is nothing shy of evil. But we agreed not to debate evolution right now, so I won’t go into details. Also, you mis-attributed a quote to me. I think it was a copy-and-paste error, but I was still able to follow your comment.

You have identified that we have two lines of discussion going. First, whether God exists and second what the nature of God is. On the first topic, you did not responded to my critique of ID: since ID amounts to an argument from personal incredulity, it is invalid. Even though we have not established that God exists, I am still interested in debating God’s nature as well.

I don’t find the attributes of omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent hard to fit together, I find the those three traits in one being to be inconsistent with suffering and evil in the world. Thankfully, you address this issue. Thus if there is a God, God cannot be have all three traits.

I would suggest that we need to take into account God’s justice. In debating God’s existence and his personality (now) we have to take into account what He plans to do.

Whoa, wait a minute. You can’t defend the three aforementioned traits of God by invoking the additional traits of justice and the ability/desire to plan. Demonstrate these new traits first, if possible.

What is evil? It is that which is against God.

Again, this is an attempt to sneak in another quality of God without justification. You must demonstrate that God possesses the trait of defining good and evil. You cannot presuppose that God has anything to do with morality.

God created us the way we are for a purpose.

Yet again, you are assuming that God is omnific (all-creating) and that God has a purpose in mind without demonstrating either.

You do attempt to defend the three quintessential traits of Bible-God by invoking freewill. Personally, I see no reason to assume that we have freewill, but let’s suppose that we do. This only addresses human caused suffering. Clearly, creating a world without natural disasters would have no impact on freewill. Why, then, do we have natural disasters that kill millions? Is it because God could not create the world without such disasters? Then God is not omnipotent. Is it because God did not know the world would have natural disasters? Then God is not omniscient. Is it because God doesn’t care enough about our suffering? Then God is not omnibenevolent. Pick any reason and the result is that the Bible’s description of God is inaccurate at best.

Remember, the problem of evil/suffering is my proof of Bible-God’s nonexistence. To use other traits of Bible-God, you must prove that God possesses those traits first.

Lastly, I didn’t find your comment angry at all. In fact, you’ve been downright polite. Please don’t be too afraid to use strong language. As long as we refrain from name-calling, I don’t mind a heated debate.

Enjoy your day in the UK.