Noel Byrnewriting in the Irish Freethinker and Humanist Magazine on the theological fiction of an omnipotent god. 

Wikipedia gives twenty eight attributes of the Christian god. It is impossible in an article such as this to deal with such a number and so I will deal principally with the Omni attributes of Omnipotence (all powerful), Omniscience (all knowing), Omnipresent (present everywhere) and Omnibenevolence (all good), their relationship to each other and some of the other alleged attributes. 

It is the illogicality and incoherency of these fictive attributes that is the subject of this essay. These particular attributes arise in the philosophy of religion based on Anselm’s “perfect being” ontological proof of god’s existence that attempts to show that “god is a necessary perfect being that none greater can be conceived”. This attempted proof is strictly “a priori” which means it is entirely dependent on reason and logic and not on experience. It is about a god with all the maximal positive attributes theology can think of. With these attributes theologians have created a god that theology itself seems unable to comprehend, a morally and mentally supreme being which to theologians and believers is a mystery, and to the godless a chimera. Theologians have inverted the faults, flaws and weaknesses of man and created their own Ubermensch, giving him supernatural qualities and then glorifying them in their anthropomorphic divine god.

Omnipotence

This attribute includes creation of the universe ex nihilo as well as the supernatural worlds of heaven and hell and the inhabitants of both. I will not deal with some of the philosophical arguments against god's omnipotence such as can he make a stone so big that he cannot lift it, as obviously I can, given enough cement and sand. Nor such as can he make a square circle. I am taking omnipotence in the sense of being capable of doing anything which is logically possible. Although if he is capable of miracles, theophanies and resurrections, he should be capable of illogicalities as we must presume logic is also of his creation and omnipotence should mean totally unlimited power.

This universe with man at the apex is supposedly god's perfect creation. This is a god who could have created any other logically possible world. Any modern person, given god's abilities and powers, could design and create a much better world. Why did he not create a world without natural or moral evil? If evil exists, as it surely does, then it is also part of gods creation. Everything is supposedly god's creation except himself. If god is omnipotent then there is nothing he cannot do. However if he is all good or omnibenevolent, then he cannot do bad or evil things such as sin. But to be omnipotent allows one to do evil. Not being able to sin limits his omnipotence and he is therefore not fully omnipotent. Omnipotence allows him to spare mans suffering and hurt, yet he does not spare us. 

Omnipotence and perfect goodness are inconsistent. God cannot be both. If god is perfect and living in total perfection why create at all? What reason would god have? Creation implies a need or a desire. A need or a desire signifies a lack and a lack implies imperfection. With god's omnipotence he could imagine or sense a universe and man without having to actually create it. A perfect god would also create perfectly. To do otherwise would signify imperfection. It is obvious to mankind, let alone god, that creation is imperfect.

The Holocaust on its own is sufficient to show the unintelligibility and bad design of an Omnipotent and all loving god, not to mention the millions of species which have gone extinct. God according to the theologians is the cause of everything, which means he is the cause of both good and evil. If he is not the cause of everything then he is not omnipotent. So is evil in the world by god's will or is it here in opposition to god's will? If god is omnipotent, wholly good, and evil exists, there is a contradiction between these three propositions. If any two are true then the third is false. Omnipotence, perfectly good and the existence of evil together are both incoherent and illogical.

Omniscience

This means god knows everything including his own actions in advance and with perfect foreknowledge he could not change his mind. Accordingly he has no free will or choice. This also shows the illusoriness of prayer. There are many instances where you cannot know that you don’t know something. This must also be true of god. Religionists place their god maximally above humans in positive attributes and abilities. If there is even one thing that god does not know, that invalidates his omniscience. 

Perhaps this god of the theologians is a lesser god and knows nothing of a higher god or gods who may have attributes far in excess of his attributes and of which he knows nothing and who created him? This is as provable as the god of the theologians we are dealing with here. Perhaps there is a group of gods, some more superior than others of which he is unaware. Perhaps some entity, a being or group of beings, in some other physical universe unknown to us may have created our universe or arranged our singularity. Certainly physicists envisage and theorize about multiple universes. There is no logical reason to assume the originator or creator of our universe is a supernatural being of any sort and certainly not required to have all the attributes attributed by theologians. And then of course wouldn’t the existence of any such being need to be explained in terms of its origin or creation and so we get into infinite regress. Looking at our world as it is, if there is a god, he certainly does not have the properties of a perfect designer or of being all good. It is possible to have a god who could have created a world similar to this but without suffering or evil. Such a god would be a greater god.

If god knew everything from eternity and before he created, then he knew Adam would eat the apple even before Eve was created. He knew his creation was imperfect yet continued on and then finally destroyed most of his creation at the time of the flood, again even though he knew before his creation that he would destroy all mankind apart from Noah and his family. So, at the exact moment God was creating humans, he knew they were imperfect and that he would wipe them out with a flood. By knowing this, God created humans with the express intention of killing them, and he did this while also knowing that he would one day send Jesus, his son, to Earth to redeem us from our sinfulness once and for all. 

None of this makes any sense. And this conclusion raises serious charges at the door of this allegedly “loving” God. God must thereby share in the guilt of Adam. What about Satan? Satan is another of god's creations, who with his omniscience, god knew would rebel and tempt humans. Apparently he is still roaming the world and causing temptation. Why does this Omnigod not destroy him or keep him confined in hell? God appears to be an Omnipotent being who does not get his own way. Doesn’t say a lot for god's intelligence, design plan or omnipotence to create angels who are out of his control!

Omnipresent

This attribute means present everywhere and at all time. If god is omnipresent then he is also where evil is - in rape, war, hunger, thirst, illness, the holocaust. If he is not in such places then he in not omnipresent. He must also be in hell. He must be in every atom and particle, he must be in every bomb, bullet and missile. He must be in all sin, dirt and filth, defilement and corruption.

God is also allegedly timeless and immutable. Now if god exists outside of time then he cannot exist within the universe which is in time and constantly changing. To be in the world he would need to be temporal. Any change to god would alter his perfection. Because god is perfect he cannot change. To change would be to improve or disimprove and either such movement would mean not being supremely perfect prior to the change. Being unchanging means god cannot have a human body as bodies constantly change. If he exists outside universal time means not to exist in the universe at all. So why bother? 

Some apologists would say god lives in an eternal present. An eternal present is a self-contradiction and illogical. Who or what was this god before the universe? There was no time, no space, no things, and no events. Just god existing, no light no sound, no nothing. There was no god. What we call god is a human concept and construct to try and explain ultimate questions. The theological concept of the omnigod fails utterly in this attempt. What is happening with the omnigod is the confusion between the concept of a god or controlling force and the thing in itself.

Omnibenevolence 

This refers to god's moral perfection and implies god's moral responsibility for his actions and this would include perfect justice, mercy, compassion and love. It is one of the easier attributes to dismiss. Gratuitous and natural evil in the world are obvious to everyone. Evil and suffering of themselves contradict an omnibenevolent and omnipotent god. Not to forgive, or show love and compassion would not be omnibenevolent. The creation of Hell, a place of terrible and everlasting punishment, is not the act of an omnibenevolent an omnipotent god. Hell was created by a god who knew his creation was imperfect and knew how much of humanity would finish up there. It was quite possible for him not to allow those he knew would finish up in hell not to be born, yet he did not do so. Our birth was compulsory. We had no choice in it. 

If we accept Eutyphro’s first choice then whatever god does is good by definition. This means genocide and slavery as per Yahweh are good. God therefore cannot be omnibenevolent as the term would in this case include evil. Any reading of the bible immediately debunks god's omnibenevolence. There is in Christianity only one god, as such the Yahweh of the Old Testament is the same god as the Jesus of the New Testament. The father and the son are one in the trinity. Jesus is Yahweh’s son and indeed the embodiment of the first person of the Trinity, god the father. The Yahweh of the old testament said by Richard Dawkins to be:

arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction; jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capricious malevolent bully.

A true description of the god of the Old Testament. Yahweh and Jesus are one. This whole issue of evil is of course the obvious and outstanding evidence against omnibenevolence as we all “walk mourning and weeping in this valley of tears”.

If god cannot create good without evil then that is a restriction on his omnipotence. The fact of unnecessary suffering in the world is inconsistent with a god who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. Why did god create a tree that gave knowledge of evil, and with his omniscience know that Adam would eat of it and thereby cause suffering for all mankind? If god really had man's qualities maximally magnified, would he not exercise his infinite power to render all men happy? 

We can scarcely find anyone on earth who is fully satisfied with their lot. If omnigod clearly always knew from eternity that the sacrifice of Jesus would ultimately provide redemption for sin, then why does he destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all life apart from Noah and his family at the time of the flood? The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and life on earth at the time of the flood must somehow not have been part of Yahweh’s divine plan of Jesus’s redemption? Yet the Bible implies the redemption was for all of humanity. If so this makes the destruction of the two towns and the flood unnecessary, capricious and maliciously murderous. Such an entity would not qualify as an omniscient and omnibenevolent god.

Why would this all-perfect god tempt Adam? Why is he so immersed in the puny concerns of one bronze age, goat herding tribe, trying to capture a piece of land on this small planet, concerned enough to assist in having the native people of that land, women and children included, slaughtered ? Why come to this particular desert tribe, who after two thousand years are still waiting on their messiah. Surely a failure of divine thought! There were many sophisticated cultures around at that time to whom he could have appeared. 

Omnigod is supposedly without needs or appetites, yet in the bible he can be angry or loving. These attributes are also contradicted in Jesus who is supposedly god and man. As man he changes, has feelings, emotions, and needs and therefore is not this perfect being of the attributes. The supposed Trinitarian nature of god also contradicts the omnigod who is simple, one and unchanging. This Omnigod bears no resemblance to the god that the average religionist believes in and prays to. The god we have been discussing is really only a glorified human. It comes from the thought that the universe must have a cause and the cause must be greater than man. As the highest creation we know is man, so is this god anthropomorphised. 

The absence of all evidence of gods existence is sufficient reason to make it most unlikely he exists. It is the illogicality of these attributes and the failure of the arguments for god's existence that make “faith’ necessary for belief. There is a major difference between the idea of god and the existence of god. None of these attributes prove that god actually exists in reality. Everything we are discussing here is absolutely speculative as there is absolutely no evidence of this entity with its wonderful attributes. Why would god require these useless attributes for eternity anyhow if they served no purpose before he created and after our universe is gone?

The proposition that god or gods exist does not logically imply he or they are the creator of the universe. Even if the god with the maximal attributes we are discussing here were shown to exist it does not in any way prove the Christian god. It would only prove the existence of a particular god in a possible pantheon.

This omnigod of theology is only an abstraction to be debated philosophically and theologically.

 ⏩ Noel Byrne is a committee member of EOLI. He is a retired Civil Servant and a Humanist, with a principal interest in Philosophy, and a particular interest in Ethics and Morality.

The Illogicality Of The Omni-God

Noel Byrnewriting in the Irish Freethinker and Humanist Magazine on the theological fiction of an omnipotent god. 

Wikipedia gives twenty eight attributes of the Christian god. It is impossible in an article such as this to deal with such a number and so I will deal principally with the Omni attributes of Omnipotence (all powerful), Omniscience (all knowing), Omnipresent (present everywhere) and Omnibenevolence (all good), their relationship to each other and some of the other alleged attributes. 

It is the illogicality and incoherency of these fictive attributes that is the subject of this essay. These particular attributes arise in the philosophy of religion based on Anselm’s “perfect being” ontological proof of god’s existence that attempts to show that “god is a necessary perfect being that none greater can be conceived”. This attempted proof is strictly “a priori” which means it is entirely dependent on reason and logic and not on experience. It is about a god with all the maximal positive attributes theology can think of. With these attributes theologians have created a god that theology itself seems unable to comprehend, a morally and mentally supreme being which to theologians and believers is a mystery, and to the godless a chimera. Theologians have inverted the faults, flaws and weaknesses of man and created their own Ubermensch, giving him supernatural qualities and then glorifying them in their anthropomorphic divine god.

Omnipotence

This attribute includes creation of the universe ex nihilo as well as the supernatural worlds of heaven and hell and the inhabitants of both. I will not deal with some of the philosophical arguments against god's omnipotence such as can he make a stone so big that he cannot lift it, as obviously I can, given enough cement and sand. Nor such as can he make a square circle. I am taking omnipotence in the sense of being capable of doing anything which is logically possible. Although if he is capable of miracles, theophanies and resurrections, he should be capable of illogicalities as we must presume logic is also of his creation and omnipotence should mean totally unlimited power.

This universe with man at the apex is supposedly god's perfect creation. This is a god who could have created any other logically possible world. Any modern person, given god's abilities and powers, could design and create a much better world. Why did he not create a world without natural or moral evil? If evil exists, as it surely does, then it is also part of gods creation. Everything is supposedly god's creation except himself. If god is omnipotent then there is nothing he cannot do. However if he is all good or omnibenevolent, then he cannot do bad or evil things such as sin. But to be omnipotent allows one to do evil. Not being able to sin limits his omnipotence and he is therefore not fully omnipotent. Omnipotence allows him to spare mans suffering and hurt, yet he does not spare us. 

Omnipotence and perfect goodness are inconsistent. God cannot be both. If god is perfect and living in total perfection why create at all? What reason would god have? Creation implies a need or a desire. A need or a desire signifies a lack and a lack implies imperfection. With god's omnipotence he could imagine or sense a universe and man without having to actually create it. A perfect god would also create perfectly. To do otherwise would signify imperfection. It is obvious to mankind, let alone god, that creation is imperfect.

The Holocaust on its own is sufficient to show the unintelligibility and bad design of an Omnipotent and all loving god, not to mention the millions of species which have gone extinct. God according to the theologians is the cause of everything, which means he is the cause of both good and evil. If he is not the cause of everything then he is not omnipotent. So is evil in the world by god's will or is it here in opposition to god's will? If god is omnipotent, wholly good, and evil exists, there is a contradiction between these three propositions. If any two are true then the third is false. Omnipotence, perfectly good and the existence of evil together are both incoherent and illogical.

Omniscience

This means god knows everything including his own actions in advance and with perfect foreknowledge he could not change his mind. Accordingly he has no free will or choice. This also shows the illusoriness of prayer. There are many instances where you cannot know that you don’t know something. This must also be true of god. Religionists place their god maximally above humans in positive attributes and abilities. If there is even one thing that god does not know, that invalidates his omniscience. 

Perhaps this god of the theologians is a lesser god and knows nothing of a higher god or gods who may have attributes far in excess of his attributes and of which he knows nothing and who created him? This is as provable as the god of the theologians we are dealing with here. Perhaps there is a group of gods, some more superior than others of which he is unaware. Perhaps some entity, a being or group of beings, in some other physical universe unknown to us may have created our universe or arranged our singularity. Certainly physicists envisage and theorize about multiple universes. There is no logical reason to assume the originator or creator of our universe is a supernatural being of any sort and certainly not required to have all the attributes attributed by theologians. And then of course wouldn’t the existence of any such being need to be explained in terms of its origin or creation and so we get into infinite regress. Looking at our world as it is, if there is a god, he certainly does not have the properties of a perfect designer or of being all good. It is possible to have a god who could have created a world similar to this but without suffering or evil. Such a god would be a greater god.

If god knew everything from eternity and before he created, then he knew Adam would eat the apple even before Eve was created. He knew his creation was imperfect yet continued on and then finally destroyed most of his creation at the time of the flood, again even though he knew before his creation that he would destroy all mankind apart from Noah and his family. So, at the exact moment God was creating humans, he knew they were imperfect and that he would wipe them out with a flood. By knowing this, God created humans with the express intention of killing them, and he did this while also knowing that he would one day send Jesus, his son, to Earth to redeem us from our sinfulness once and for all. 

None of this makes any sense. And this conclusion raises serious charges at the door of this allegedly “loving” God. God must thereby share in the guilt of Adam. What about Satan? Satan is another of god's creations, who with his omniscience, god knew would rebel and tempt humans. Apparently he is still roaming the world and causing temptation. Why does this Omnigod not destroy him or keep him confined in hell? God appears to be an Omnipotent being who does not get his own way. Doesn’t say a lot for god's intelligence, design plan or omnipotence to create angels who are out of his control!

Omnipresent

This attribute means present everywhere and at all time. If god is omnipresent then he is also where evil is - in rape, war, hunger, thirst, illness, the holocaust. If he is not in such places then he in not omnipresent. He must also be in hell. He must be in every atom and particle, he must be in every bomb, bullet and missile. He must be in all sin, dirt and filth, defilement and corruption.

God is also allegedly timeless and immutable. Now if god exists outside of time then he cannot exist within the universe which is in time and constantly changing. To be in the world he would need to be temporal. Any change to god would alter his perfection. Because god is perfect he cannot change. To change would be to improve or disimprove and either such movement would mean not being supremely perfect prior to the change. Being unchanging means god cannot have a human body as bodies constantly change. If he exists outside universal time means not to exist in the universe at all. So why bother? 

Some apologists would say god lives in an eternal present. An eternal present is a self-contradiction and illogical. Who or what was this god before the universe? There was no time, no space, no things, and no events. Just god existing, no light no sound, no nothing. There was no god. What we call god is a human concept and construct to try and explain ultimate questions. The theological concept of the omnigod fails utterly in this attempt. What is happening with the omnigod is the confusion between the concept of a god or controlling force and the thing in itself.

Omnibenevolence 

This refers to god's moral perfection and implies god's moral responsibility for his actions and this would include perfect justice, mercy, compassion and love. It is one of the easier attributes to dismiss. Gratuitous and natural evil in the world are obvious to everyone. Evil and suffering of themselves contradict an omnibenevolent and omnipotent god. Not to forgive, or show love and compassion would not be omnibenevolent. The creation of Hell, a place of terrible and everlasting punishment, is not the act of an omnibenevolent an omnipotent god. Hell was created by a god who knew his creation was imperfect and knew how much of humanity would finish up there. It was quite possible for him not to allow those he knew would finish up in hell not to be born, yet he did not do so. Our birth was compulsory. We had no choice in it. 

If we accept Eutyphro’s first choice then whatever god does is good by definition. This means genocide and slavery as per Yahweh are good. God therefore cannot be omnibenevolent as the term would in this case include evil. Any reading of the bible immediately debunks god's omnibenevolence. There is in Christianity only one god, as such the Yahweh of the Old Testament is the same god as the Jesus of the New Testament. The father and the son are one in the trinity. Jesus is Yahweh’s son and indeed the embodiment of the first person of the Trinity, god the father. The Yahweh of the old testament said by Richard Dawkins to be:

arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction; jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capricious malevolent bully.

A true description of the god of the Old Testament. Yahweh and Jesus are one. This whole issue of evil is of course the obvious and outstanding evidence against omnibenevolence as we all “walk mourning and weeping in this valley of tears”.

If god cannot create good without evil then that is a restriction on his omnipotence. The fact of unnecessary suffering in the world is inconsistent with a god who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. Why did god create a tree that gave knowledge of evil, and with his omniscience know that Adam would eat of it and thereby cause suffering for all mankind? If god really had man's qualities maximally magnified, would he not exercise his infinite power to render all men happy? 

We can scarcely find anyone on earth who is fully satisfied with their lot. If omnigod clearly always knew from eternity that the sacrifice of Jesus would ultimately provide redemption for sin, then why does he destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all life apart from Noah and his family at the time of the flood? The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and life on earth at the time of the flood must somehow not have been part of Yahweh’s divine plan of Jesus’s redemption? Yet the Bible implies the redemption was for all of humanity. If so this makes the destruction of the two towns and the flood unnecessary, capricious and maliciously murderous. Such an entity would not qualify as an omniscient and omnibenevolent god.

Why would this all-perfect god tempt Adam? Why is he so immersed in the puny concerns of one bronze age, goat herding tribe, trying to capture a piece of land on this small planet, concerned enough to assist in having the native people of that land, women and children included, slaughtered ? Why come to this particular desert tribe, who after two thousand years are still waiting on their messiah. Surely a failure of divine thought! There were many sophisticated cultures around at that time to whom he could have appeared. 

Omnigod is supposedly without needs or appetites, yet in the bible he can be angry or loving. These attributes are also contradicted in Jesus who is supposedly god and man. As man he changes, has feelings, emotions, and needs and therefore is not this perfect being of the attributes. The supposed Trinitarian nature of god also contradicts the omnigod who is simple, one and unchanging. This Omnigod bears no resemblance to the god that the average religionist believes in and prays to. The god we have been discussing is really only a glorified human. It comes from the thought that the universe must have a cause and the cause must be greater than man. As the highest creation we know is man, so is this god anthropomorphised. 

The absence of all evidence of gods existence is sufficient reason to make it most unlikely he exists. It is the illogicality of these attributes and the failure of the arguments for god's existence that make “faith’ necessary for belief. There is a major difference between the idea of god and the existence of god. None of these attributes prove that god actually exists in reality. Everything we are discussing here is absolutely speculative as there is absolutely no evidence of this entity with its wonderful attributes. Why would god require these useless attributes for eternity anyhow if they served no purpose before he created and after our universe is gone?

The proposition that god or gods exist does not logically imply he or they are the creator of the universe. Even if the god with the maximal attributes we are discussing here were shown to exist it does not in any way prove the Christian god. It would only prove the existence of a particular god in a possible pantheon.

This omnigod of theology is only an abstraction to be debated philosophically and theologically.

 ⏩ Noel Byrne is a committee member of EOLI. He is a retired Civil Servant and a Humanist, with a principal interest in Philosophy, and a particular interest in Ethics and Morality.

15 comments:

  1. Most theologians haven't a clue about "God". They say he is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-merciful all-loving. But ask them about perhaps the greatest natural disaster of all time - the "Spanish 'Flu" of 1918, which killed over 50 million people worldwide, they will tell you that "God works in mysterious ways" and "we mere humans cannot know the mind of God". Yet they tell us that it is God's will that we are born in sin and if we don't sort ourselves out before we die,then after we die we will be punished for all eternity - by an all-merciful God! As I say, they haven't a clue and the same theologians and clerics expect us to worship a God whose nature they cannot begin to understand, so what chance have we! Religion, if it weren't such an historically evil force, is for the birds

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  2. On the matter of Yahweh, Noel thinks he understands everything when all the while he actually understands nothing.

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    1. I think Noel understands it very well - he has a strong command of the philosophy and the theology. I attended a talk he gave last week on End of Life - he understood that very well too. Yahweh was a biblical gangster running around deserts with his band of hoodlums inflicting genocide and infanticide. He is cherished by Hate Theology. If there is a supreme creator it is not the biblical thug. It is something about which we know nothing.
      My view, there is no supreme creator. I can see why people might draw inferences that there is such a being but not why they conclude it is one of love. All the evidence from our world suggests to me that whoever created it was more filled with hate than love. I don't think there is either a hateful god or a loving god. That is just something the theologians made up.

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    2. Sean,

      Maybe an article explaining why Noel is wrong from yourself?

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    3. for sure - all perspectives welcome. Even Young Earth Creationists get their say on TPQ!

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  3. I very much appreciate Roger Scruton's reference to theology - "Facts no longer made contact with the theory, which had risen above the facts on clouds of nonsense, rather like a theological system."

    I think Steven Weinberg pretty much got it right: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

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    1. I prefer the Australian Aboriginal views on creation, life and their place in it. There is simply no distinction between any of it. From the animals to the Earth, sea and stars all of them are a part of everything else.

      And nowhere is an petty, vindictive, misogynist, capricious, bloodthirsty, infanticidal, genocidal, sectarian, megalomaniacal, narcissistical Deity demanding total and complete mind-enslavement devotion. More than that demands you love him or else he will cast you into a pit of eternal torture, agony and burning.

      But He loves you. He loves you, and he needs MONEY! (RIP George Carlin)

      Weird I know.

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    2. Pangu is as defensible a creation myth as that of the Christian god. Same for turtles all the way down.
      Creationist myths can be interesting in an anthropological sense but they have no scientific value.

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    3. I know that, it's just a far more palatable story to me. If I had to chose one that's what I'd go for. Not the insane bloodthirsty furher allegiance one.

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  4. Illogical indeed. This idea of an omnipotent god is farcical. In the early books of the Old Testament Yaweh is one of a number of different gods. All the different tribes had a god. And Yaweh is a petty, petulent, jealous god. The Israelites couldn't defeat the Canaanites because they had "iron chariots" even though Yaweh was with them, so clearly not omnipotent. Then the Israelites are taken into slavery in Babylon, and when they are released Yaweh is significantly different. The Yaweh of second temple Judaism is the one true god, omnipotent, omniscient and engaged in a battle of good v evil, and the judge that decides heaven or hell, just like the Zoroastrian god they had been exposed to in Babylon. Clearly much of second temple Judaism was taken from Zoroastrianism, yet I was told as a boy that god was the same, yesterday, today and forever. Obviously not! The amount of self deceit needed to believe in religion is quite incredible.

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    1. even the most devout must ask themselves questions after considering the clarity Noel brings to the topic,
      Interesting stuff Peter - although I don't regard it as delusional to believe in a Creator even though I dismiss any possibility of it. I think where the delusion sets in is in believing in the interventionist god, one who answers prayer and sorts out the bank balance or mortgage. That is all nonsense. There is no more reason to think there is an afterlife as there is to believe in a before life. The Romans had a great inscription on their headstones.

      I was not
      I was
      I am not
      I care not

      Sort of runs parallel with Seneca:

      Death is just not being. It will be the same after me as it was before me. If there is any torment in the latter state, then there must also have been torment in the period before we saw the light of day; yet we never felt conscious of any distress then. Death follows us and death precedes us.

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    2. "Death follows us and death precedes us."

      Well that's as bleak as all fuck.

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    3. Steve - I find it so natural, not bleak. It is just the way things are. Imagine it were some other way - if people could live forever they could be tormented for ever. I am quite philosophical about the natural order of things and when my time comes I want to see it end on my terms and not those of some cleric. The last thing I will ever do as a human being I don't want stolen from me by somebody else telling me that I must die the way they want, not how I want.

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  5. AM
    I am not saying that it is delusional to believe in a creator. We just don't know how the universe was created, but to believe in the creator of the bible takes a massive dose of self delusion. As Matt Dillihunty says, there is no difference to us between no god and a non-interventionist god.

    Steve
    Not bleak at all, just the natural order. Living forever, either in torment or worshipping a celestial Kim Jong-un, is a much bleaker idea.

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    1. Peter - seems sense to me not to believe in a biblical creator. It is just a creation myth. We will learn as much about a creator from Spiderman comics as we will from the bible.

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