Philosophy Now Forum

Mark Twain joins the discussion:

https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/thoughts_of_god.html

Aye, the justification of God is pure unintended satire.

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed Jul 16, 2025 9:42 am

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Jul 16, 2025 9:23 am

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Tue Jul 15, 2025 7:32 pm
No good God kills.

Sure a good God kills! Everlasting life would be very unpleasant if only because my dog would never get rid of his fleas.

Ah, but they'll be transcendent fleas. Former irritating, vampiric, disease vectors.

The transcendent doesn't work does it?

Not if you conflate everlasting and eternal

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Jul 16, 2025 6:41 pm

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed Jul 16, 2025 9:42 am

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Jul 16, 2025 9:23 am

Sure a good God kills! Everlasting life would be very unpleasant if only because my dog would never get rid of his fleas.

Ah, but they'll be transcendent fleas. Former irritating, vampiric, disease vectors.

The transcendent doesn't work does it?

Not if you conflate everlasting and eternal

Which I do, but that doesn't create eternal life with other superpowers.

Excusing God
Raymond Tallis highlights the problem of evil.

Darwin’s admission that he could not persuade himself “that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars” can be extrapolated to a lot of what happens in the natural world.

Over and over again, we can note truly grim, gruesome, grotesque things that unfold in the slaughterhouse that is nature. All animals [including us] are in the crosshairs regarding any number of terrible things that can come their [our] way. It's ever and always only a matter of time.

But unlike other animals, self-conscious human beings are able to actually comment on it. And to react to it. And most either 1] think about it not at all when things are going well for them or 2] when things are going bad, instead, most fall back on God and religion for the "explanation".

And with moral commandments, immortality and salvation on the line, how hard can it be to just rationalize all that terrible pain and suffering away? It's merely harder for some than for others.

And then, of course, there is man-made evil (AKA ‘moral evil’). This is the suffering we inflict on each other as we pursue our individual interests or those of the communities to which we belong: the endless human story of oppression, criminality, and war.

And the part where that is attributed to heretics, skeptics, atheists, infidels, nihilists, heathens, pagans, etc. Or even to the Devil himself? Just not to their own loving, just and merciful Creator.

Then those who accept that it may well all revolve around their own God. But, alas, He is not omnipotent. He created the universe with the best of intentions, but then things got out of hand and beyond His control.

The usual theistic defence is that our special status as the apple of God’s eye requires that we should have free will, which implies the power of choosing between doing good and doing evil, and some choose evil.

And when the apples are confronted with such things as this...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_diseases

...and all other "acts of God", what choice do they have but to accept that God's mysterious ways are simply beyond the reach of mere mortals. After all, in a No God universe, these terrible things "just happen".

However, to me this response seems frivolous when I think of the pain inflicted on innocents by those who choose evil.

Of course, here, some are at least able to convince themselves that in a No God world, there is still the capacity to make distinctions between good and evil. Philosophically, for example. I'm just not one of them. Here and now.[/quote]

The recent testimony of Professor Nick Maynard, a British surgeon who led an emergency medical team in central Gaza at Al-Aqsa Hospital, speaks for itself:

“One child I’ll never forget had burns so bad you could see her facial bones. We knew there was no chance of her surviving but there was no morphine to give her. So not only was she inevitably going to die, but she would die in agony. And there was nowhere for her to go, so she died on the floor of the emergency room.”

See what I mean? If you are this child or one of her loved ones, it's either a God, the God, their God or...you tell me.

Finally, the part where this terrible suffering in Gaza, involving those who inflict it and those who endure it, revolves around the fact that both sides believe in the very same God!

The recent testimony of Professor Nick Maynard, a British surgeon who led an emergency medical team in central Gaza at Al-Aqsa Hospital, speaks for itself:

“One child I’ll never forget had burns so bad you could see her facial bones. We knew there was no chance of her surviving but there was no morphine to give her. So not only was she inevitably going to die, but she would die in agony. And there was nowhere for her to go, so she died on the floor of the emergency room.”

See what I mean? If you are this child or one of her loved ones, it's either a God, the God, their God or...you tell me.
[/quote]

The right question? (blaming a god)

I would ask Dr.Maynard some questions (sorry, I'm US, refuse to call surgeons Mr.)

Now if that had been a hopelessly burned dying dog, would you have felt so helpless? You wouldn't have found something? And if you had morphine, would you have administered just enough to dull the pain but not kill her, or would you have given her enough to put her past pain (but perhaps not wake up)

Yes there are moral issues involved. Also including god. I suggest Robert Service's poem "On the Wire"

Alexiev wrote: ↑Wed Jul 16, 2025 11:50 am Mark Twain joins the discussion:

https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/thoughts_of_god.html

Mark Twain here was discussing the Problem of Evil. The only moral way to disappear the Problem of Evil is to divest God of the attribute of omnipotence.

Sans the attribute of omnipotence God personifies the best of humanity, and sans omnipotence God can not be weaponised by tyrants.

Belinda wrote: ↑Mon Aug 04, 2025 11:25 pm

Alexiev wrote: ↑Wed Jul 16, 2025 11:50 am Mark Twain joins the discussion:

https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/thoughts_of_god.html

Mark Twain here was discussing the Problem of Evil. The only moral way to disappear the Problem of Evil is to divest God of the attribute of omnipotence.

Sans the attribute of omnipotence God personifies the best of humanity, and sans omnipotence God can not be weaponised by tyrants.

He certainly doesn't personify anywhere near the best of humanity. He personifies some of the absolute worst, including in the NT.

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Tue Aug 05, 2025 4:46 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Mon Aug 04, 2025 11:25 pm

Alexiev wrote: ↑Wed Jul 16, 2025 11:50 am Mark Twain joins the discussion:

https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/thoughts_of_god.html

Mark Twain here was discussing the Problem of Evil. The only moral way to disappear the Problem of Evil is to divest God of the attribute of omnipotence.

Sans the attribute of omnipotence God personifies the best of humanity, and sans omnipotence God can not be weaponised by tyrants.

He certainly doesn't personify anywhere near the best of humanity. He personifies some of the absolute worst, including in the NT.

I referred to my God not to your God. You are so immersed in religion you don't even know how insulting you were in your post. You are more immersed in religion than IC who at least knows there are different points of view.

Belinda wrote: ↑Tue Aug 05, 2025 5:45 pm

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Tue Aug 05, 2025 4:46 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Mon Aug 04, 2025 11:25 pm

Mark Twain here was discussing the Problem of Evil. The only moral way to disappear the Problem of Evil is to divest God of the attribute of omnipotence.

Sans the attribute of omnipotence God personifies the best of humanity, and sans omnipotence God can not be weaponised by tyrants.

He certainly doesn't personify anywhere near the best of humanity. He personifies some of the absolute worst, including in the NT.

I referred to my God not to your God. You are so immersed in religion you don't even know how insulting you were in your post. You are more immersed in religion than IC who at least knows there are different points of view.

I have no idea how or why you're insulted. I'm sorry that you are.

You referred to God.

Belinda wrote: ↑Mon Aug 04, 2025 11:25 pm
Mark Twain here was discussing the Problem of Evil. The only moral way to disappear the Problem of Evil is to divest God of the attribute of omnipotence.

Sans the attribute of omnipotence God personifies the best of humanity, and sans omnipotence God can not be weaponised by tyrants.

You expect Sam Clemens to be serious? About anything? OK, humor and irony can contain truths, but he's almost always being misanthropic.

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Tue Aug 05, 2025 7:19 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Tue Aug 05, 2025 5:45 pm

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Tue Aug 05, 2025 4:46 pm
He certainly doesn't personify anywhere near the best of humanity. He personifies some of the absolute worst, including in the NT.

I referred to my God not to your God. You are so immersed in religion you don't even know how insulting you were in your post. You are more immersed in religion than IC who at least knows there are different points of view.

I have no idea how or why you're insulted. I'm sorry that you are.

You referred to God.

But I didn't say religionists' God is my God I said my God is my own God. My own God is in the image of what I want to be.

You could have been dismissive of the general idea that God is not a separate entity but is part of oneself as IC would object; that would merely disagree with the general idea. What you did was disparage what I want to be.

I know you did not mean to do it. I have not succeeded in explaining the Sea of Faith point of view. You cannot have read the obituary to Don Cupitt that I posted a link to.

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Aug 06, 2025 9:44 am

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Tue Aug 05, 2025 7:19 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Tue Aug 05, 2025 5:45 pm

I referred to my God not to your God. You are so immersed in religion you don't even know how insulting you were in your post. You are more immersed in religion than IC who at least knows there are different points of view.

I have no idea how or why you're insulted. I'm sorry that you are.

You referred to God.

But I didn't say religionists' God is my God I said my God is my own God. My own God is in the image of what I want to be.

You could have been dismissive of the general idea that God is not a separate entity but is part of oneself as IC would object; that would merely disagree with the general idea. What you did was disparage what I want to be.

I know you did not mean to do it. I have not succeeded in explaining the Sea of Faith point of view. You cannot have read the obituary to Don Cupitt that I posted a link to.

Why would I need to read that? I've read him.

I didn't disparage you in the slightest. That's all in your imaginings. Unless disparaging your fallacious statement is disparaging you.

Show me.

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed Aug 06, 2025 10:16 am

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Aug 06, 2025 9:44 am

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Tue Aug 05, 2025 7:19 pm
I have no idea how or why you're insulted. I'm sorry that you are.

You referred to God.

But I didn't say religionists' God is my God I said my God is my own God. My own God is in the image of what I want to be.

You could have been dismissive of the general idea that God is not a separate entity but is part of oneself as IC would object; that would merely disagree with the general idea. What you did was disparage what I want to be.

I know you did not mean to do it. I have not succeeded in explaining the Sea of Faith point of view. You cannot have read the obituary to Don Cupitt that I posted a link to.

Why would I need to read that? I've read him.

I didn't disparage you in the slightest. That's all in your imaginings. Unless disparaging your fallacious statement is disparaging you.

Show me.

The thing is, Martin, it is not possible to make a fallacious statement about oneself except when one tells a lie. In other words I have privileged access to my own mind and feelings, into which you have no access whatsoever.

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Aug 06, 2025 6:26 pm

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed Aug 06, 2025 10:16 am

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Aug 06, 2025 9:44 am
But I didn't say religionists' God is my God I said my God is my own God. My own God is in the image of what I want to be.

You could have been dismissive of the general idea that God is not a separate entity but is part of oneself as IC would object; that would merely disagree with the general idea. What you did was disparage what I want to be.

I know you did not mean to do it. I have not succeeded in explaining the Sea of Faith point of view. You cannot have read the obituary to Don Cupitt that I posted a link to.

Why would I need to read that? I've read him.

I didn't disparage you in the slightest. That's all in your imaginings. Unless disparaging your fallacious statement is disparaging you.

Show me.

The thing is, Martin, it is not possible to make a fallacious statement about oneself except when one tells a lie. In other words I have privileged access to my own mind and feelings, into which you have no access whatsoever.

How was this about you Belinda?

Mark Twain here was discussing the Problem of Evil. The only moral way to disappear the Problem of Evil is to divest God of the attribute of omnipotence.

Sans the attribute of omnipotence God personifies the best of humanity, and sans omnipotence God can not be weaponised by tyrants.

And how was my response ad hominem?

He certainly doesn't personify anywhere near the best of humanity. He personifies some of the absolute worst, including in the NT.