Matt Powell OFFICIAL Youtube channel posted a video tilted “A Christian Response to Atheism” which led to me having to tutor Atheists on their worldview and even the linguistics that pertain to it.
@TickedOffPriest commented
I am just typing random letters on my keyboard with no plan as to what the end comment will say.
@jpsammy573 chimed in with
lkjie githe ssiige thoesee.
I, @kenammi355, noted
Just like 99% of online Atheists ;o)
@TestMeatDollSteak
Mass extinctions, congenital birth defects, predation, contagious diseases, parasites, floods, famines, droughts, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, reversals of the magnetic poles, tsunamis, pain and suffering in general…I’m just listing various aspects of the apparent “plan” laid out before us.
@TickedOffPriest
You can focus on the rose or the thorns.
@TestMeatDollSteak
No, if you’re going to claim that literally everything that exists came into existence through the deliberate creative act of an omniscient, omnipotent intelligence, then own that belief in full and give him full credit for the vicious thorns as well as the pretty petals.
@TickedOffPriest
Some of that is free will other parts of it are the result of the curse.
However, something tells me that even if I were to answer every single question that you had, you would just come up with more.
@TestMeatDollSteak
Because those are apologetics, not actual answers to anything. The apologetics just beg additional questions and create additional theological problems. Mainly, the problem/question of why your supposedly all powerful, all knowing deity didn’t simply choose to create a world that always fully accords with his own will and intentions. “The fall of man” begs the question that God either isn’t capable or doesn’t know how to create a world that doesn’t “fall”.
@kenammi355
I hate to interrupt but let’s back up since you began by merely jumping to merely asserted conclusions based on mere hidden assumptions so, two issues, at least, come before what you’re asserting:
1) your implying a demand to adhering to logic but on Atheism logic is accidental, as is our ability to discern it, there’s no universal imperative to adhere to it, nor to demand that others do so. Ergo, that discredits your emotively subjective and impotent demands of adhering to it and you disqualified yourself from complaining about it or basing arguments upon it.
2) you implied that those things you listed are condemnable but only as another emotively subjective personal preference du jour since you neglected the most important part: what, on your worldview, is condemnable about those things? Now, since the only accurate reply is, “Nothing” then that disqualifies you from complaining about them.
And since you disqualified yourself from adhering to logic and ethics (which is the bottom line of that part of the issue) you discredited your rejection of God.
@thesc0tsm4n9 to me
yet again [since I posted on a few threads in that comments section], you’re presupposing nonsense and relying on non-sequitors to infer them as valid.
you’re making ad hoc assertions without any substantiation for them.
@kenammi355
So then, you’re demanding adherence to logic (which is odd since you merely asserted) but then step one if for you to justify demanding adherence to logic, on your worldview. Without that, you’re just subjectively emoting about that your favorite ice-cream flavor is THE only good one and so everyone must only eat that one.
@TestMeatDollSteak
Wrong. Logic, like mathematics, is a formal description of the way that things appear to operate in the world around us. I am simply pointing out that you can’t make truth claims about things that aren’t at least comprehensible to you.
You’re also wrong about morality. All moral statements, even if they are made by some deity, are ultimately subjective judgment calls. Objective truths are true regardless of what ANY thinking, feeling being thinks or feels about them. Therefore, if there are such things as “objective moral truths”, theists have no better way to account for the existence of those objective moral facts than atheists or naturalists do. Consider the following trilemma:
Is “goodness” defined as anything that God commands? If so, then “goodness” is arbitrarily dictated by God’s subjective whims. Or, is there some standard of “goodness” that God must conform his commands and actions to? If so, then God cannot be the ultimate source of that standard, and he would instead be acting more as a messenger and/or enforcer of that standard. Or, is God himself the standard of “goodness”, such that his character or being is identical to “goodness”? If so, then the statement that “God is good” is rendered meaninglessly circular and tautological, like saying that “God is godly”, or “goodness is good”. From God’s perspective, he would just be doing what he wants to do and giving us arbitrary commands, and people such as yourself would be calling all of that “good” (which itself would just be a synonym for “God”).
No matter how you slice or dice it, the very idea of “objective morality” does not make sense.
@kenammi355
It appears that you bypassed my point by jumping right over it to where you feel comfortable—which is somewhere down the line, where you don’t belong yet since you haven’t worked your way there yet.
“Logic…is a formal description of the way that things appear to operate in the world around us” but you neglected THE key issue: “on Atheism logic is accidental, as is our ability to discern it, there’s no universal imperative to adhere to it, nor to demand that others do so.” So, you’ve done nothing but double down on a mere assertion.
“you can’t make truth claims about things that aren’t at least comprehensible to you” you first merely assume their incomprehensible to me and then make universal imperative demands about what I can’t do but that only bring us back to the issue you conveniently sidestepped.
Indeed, “Objective truths are true regardless of what ANY thinking, feeling being thinks or feels about them” but, here we go again, on Atheism objective truths are accidental, as is our ability to discern them, there’s no universal imperative to adhere to them, nor to demand that others do so. See, it all goes back to the same problem.
In fact, “there are such things as ‘objective moral truths’” and you prove it since you think it’s objectively immoral to claim to know objective morals and/or to claim “theists” have a better way to account for their existence.
Yes, I’m aware of your parroting of the Euthyphro dilemma but it’s not a dilemma, it’s a false dichotomy. But that’s a down the line discussion since you haven’t yet taken the very first step: justify demanding adhere to logic (and “morals”), on your worldview.
But hey, since you deny “objective morality” you utterly discredited yourself from ever condemning anything so what does it matter?—especially on a worldview according to which nothing objectively matters anyhow.
That brought the discussion to and end as no more replies were forthcoming.
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