44 seconds. It brought the pain.

58 and now I'm annoyed

I made it up to the redhead eating the strawberry ice cream cone, the black girl eating a chocolate one, and the blonde white guy eating a vanilla one. Way to go!

Done.

Basically saying*

no circular reasoning there

His argument falls apart in all sorts of ways.

1.) Religion doesn't actually provide an objective morality, as you stated.

2.) Religion originally said very little about morality, (Roman religion, for example, was more about ritual than about morality) and yet ancient people had systems of morality.

3.) God isn't actually used as a moral compass by most non-religionists; Ancient China was more-or-less an atheist land, and yet they were able to develop & adhere to an ethical system.

4) Philosophy has provided a large number of livable, realistic, satisfying moral systems that never reference God in any way. Best part: many of them are completely compatible with Christianity, so you don't even have to give up your SkyGod to adhere to them!

And that's just the weakpoints I'm able to name off the top of my head. I'm sure there are more when you stop & examine his treatise. This guy really is a Grade A idiot.

By the way, you reference a really interesting question in theistic philosophy: Is everything God does good because God always adheres to moral laws, or is everything God does good by definition? There isn't a consensus answer among theologians, and there are really interesting arguments in either direction.

He had the classic cop-out with it, too. Kind of like the old:
"Could god make a boulder so big that even he couldn't lift it?"
"Doesn't matter, it's not something god would do."

Yeah, that was pretty infuriating.

"The one interesting point you raise in your video, and you cop out with an "It doesn't matter"? Fuuuuuuck yooooou."

Minority opinion here, but I say the boulder question doesn't apply because it assumes the same laws and logic apply to us as do to God, and that's an assumption that is already "known" to be faulty (e.g. the Holy Trinity). It's a little like Monopoly pieces contemplating their creator and wondering if he can move 13 spaces if he wants to.

I say this while in no way trying to validate this video. Dude sucks and God knows it.

Bort, it hardly says the same laws apply to us as they do to God.

God is sold as omnipotent, ergo there is nothing God cannot do.

The question then arises, can God do something that makes God doing a specific task impossible? If not, then God cannot do everything, yet God is supposed to be able to do everything. The rock is just part of the metaphor. It's akin to your Monopoly pieces wondering if their creator can make a board game so complicated that the creator cannot play it.

This assumes people have a creator, which is highly unlikely, but you set us up the analogy.

Call it the Supreme Being Paradox.

But there are nevertheless concepts of logic you're taking for granted, such as being a thing precludes not being that thing. It's a perfectly respectable, reasonable expectation among us mortals, but if there is a god who transcends time and space and who crafted the laws that govern them, I don't see that you can start out assuming our everyday laws of logic apply to him. And again, the Holy Trinity already violates the very concept of identity, so theologically speaking logic is already right out the window.

I don't understand how even the staunchest atheist could find "The Supreme Being Paradox" even slightly compelling or convincing. And I'm saying this as a complete atheist.

Can an omnipotent being curtail its own power? I don't know. Who gives a shit? Maybe? Let's say it can't. Then it can do everything except curtail its own power. Still sounds pretty fucking powerful to me. I don't see how the God-concept (ridiculous as it is for so many other reasons) is threatened if God is technically not omni - potent, but can merely do everything except curtail its own power. Is it just the word "omnipotent" that you have a problem with?

Or let's say he can. Let's say he can make a corndog so big he can't eat it all. What's so crazy about "He probably wouldn't do that shit" again? Doesn't God -- in his infinite wisdom -- have something besides juvenile thought experiments to occupy his timelessness?


The Problem of Evil, on the other hand, is a real thing.

Oh, I should also add that in some theologies, things like free will and the apparent material determinism of the universe are precisely examples of God willfully curtailing his own power to permit his creation to develop on its own. You can look at that as an ontological cop-out if you want, and I'd be sympathetic, but it's a serious idea.

The problem with saying something is "beyond logic" is that the person is either some sort of deist not making any claims to how it has any relevance to our lives because it's inherently unknownable, or is just selectively invoking "beyond logic" for all the parts that are blatantly false and nonsensical. They embrace logic whenever it seems like it'll help them, like when people claim to find bits of Noah's Ark and explain how it works. But then scientists show it's bullshit and suddenly they're back to 'beyond logic'.

If it's beyond logic, you don't know it's true, or what it is. Until the person can define what system they are using, defending a claim as beyond logic is literally (not figuratively) the same as saying "I have no clue what I'm talking about". Because without logic or some working alternative that involves sorting fact claims from fiction with reliability, they don't.

As I understand it the whole "God can do ANYTHING" thing is a problem with certain religions only and the paradox stuff is used to FREE THE MINDS of subscribers to an all-powerful god by questioning their religions stance on the subject.

Really though, like you said, any sufficiently advanced and/or powerful being(s) could have created us if we had to have had a creator.

IW - I'm in the camp that "beyond logic" and "inherently unknowable" go together if you're aspiring to any sort of intellectual honesty in your theology. As soon as you declare your supreme being to be infinite, game's over, go home, nobody can prove a thing either way about it. Which is where serious debate on the issue has stood for hundreds of years now (unlike the guy in this video and his unserious debate).

And thanks to the Holy Trinity -- thanks to that one violation of identity alone -- we can come up with any answer we want to the "Can God ____ ?" questions. The Holy Trinity is like the sneaky "divide both sides by zero" step in those proofs that 1 = 2. For example, can God create a meal so big he can't eat it? Sure, Jesus is on record as being able to eat no more than seven hot dogs at a single sitting, while we can be pretty sure that God the Father has a larger appetite, conceivably infinite; and the Holy Spirit, being everywhere, is most certainly inside the stomach linings of all the great hotdog-eating champions simultaneously. So even simple matters like hotdog maxima fall completely apart.

Also, consider that perhaps God is not a unique being, but really one of many Gods, each of which is entirely capable of creating a universe and exercising complete control of it, including providing eternal pleasure or torture pits for his souls. However, in his own world, the God of our universe is nothing like omnipotent. In fact, he lives in his parent's basement and is obsessed with God-gamergate. From the perspective of humans, as his creations, Christian or other religious theology is just as viable as if God really was the Supreme Being of Everything.

I think he fails from the get-go by using the word "argument" while disabling comments as well as the "discussion" tab.

Ive always said - if you need the threat of eternal torture to motivate you into being a good person, you weren't a good person to begin with.

You WISH God was indifferent. An indifferent being would simply ignore us.

God will kill a child with a painful disease then send their parents to Hell if they get mad at him for not answering their prayers to heal their child.

God damn you God!!! God DAMN YOU TO HELL... which you created.

Ive always considered "hell" to be a post-christian fabrication that came after the original texts. There is plenty of evidence to support the notion that catholics in 13th century really "expanded the lore" of hell, and before it was just a concept that either meant (a) your soul would be CONSUMED when you die, and you would cease to exist -which is somehow worse than eternal torment or (b) it was just referencing Gehenna or whatever, where they would toss masses of dead bodies into a pit and burn them all, and hell is still the juvenile contradictory idea that it has always appeared to be.

The moment I saw that I knew he was basically describing God, either by his words or his deeds.

God, dawkins just makes me want to distance myself from the word atheism.

Which is why I love being able to say I'm agnostic instead - it has a tinge of humility that people like dawkins lack.

Ewww...

Now they're gonna have that weird fuzz all over them.

And the reason for that is easy to discern: because religion allows ordinary people to believe that a monstrous act can be excused by some form of doctrine or interpretation of the religion and that anything unsavory they do can simply be forgiven or ignored by their god.

It's silly to even talk about whether "Christians" are good and bad based on their ethics and religion, because it can be defined radically differently within that group. And I'm not even talking about radical splinter groups, or major sects, just person to person. I'd reasonably accept as real "Christians" two people who had nearly completely polar opposite beliefs, except for a handful of superstitions and historical claims which don't necessarily impact morality.

Most religions have a lot of 'be good' messages, and rituals. But morality isn't "be good", it's a complex and ongoing learning process of "What does good mean and how do I apply it in each situation." Even if you got rid of all the evil and ambiguous stuff in the Bible, a person applying all the good parts literally wouldn't necessarily be a good person, or apply them in the particulars well. Creeds and parables are a start to thinking about morality, not sufficient everyday instructions.

Civility is the product of self preservation. If there are three people and two form an alliance the third loses out. So the third will be inclined to get along and work with the other two for protection. Mothers also instinctually protect their young. Sons protect their mothers. Families develop. And then clans. After thousands of years the oral tales and experiences develop into religions, values and ethics. Then comes voodoo, ritual, sacrifice and slaughter. Most likely due to the lead in the water.

There are some evolutionary theories about morality and conscience being instinctual in social animals like us...and religion (as always) is just stupid people's attempt at understanding the natural world in simple ways.