It's Always Ask A Believer Day

[Cartoonist]

If God is all-powerful, can he make a rock so heavy even He can't lift it?

Regarding Intelligent Design, since God is a complex being that couldn't have come into existence by chance, who created God?

Why did you choose to believe in your God instead of the thousands of other Gods, especially considering that there isn't a shred of evidence supporting the existence of any of them, including yours?

How are you today? Is the weather nice where you live?

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. Thousands?

Nah, only a few really, with a lot of wigs and false noses and other such disguises.

[hrmjustin]

2. I was brought up in the Christian faith by non-practicing Catholics.

I decided to stick with it in my teens when I changed from Catholic School to public. I became Episcopalian at 18 because they were gay friendly.


I don't know why God created this world or why he did it over many years.


There is a light mist here in Brooklyn.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. Congratulations for discovering Thomas Aquinas, who...

first formally proposed these questions. At least we think he's the first-- similar things had been brought up by ancient Greeks.

Then, there's this thing called Christian Apologetics where actual philosophers deal with this stuff and demolish high school students who think they discovered something.

Can God design a spherical triangle? Can God deny himself? And don't forget the angels on a pinhead.

Aside from a few faithful who are trying to find answers to the unanswerable, most of this is simply an intellectual exercise with no "answers" expected. These questions were used for centuries by Jesuits to humiliate students who thought too highly of themselves.

(Hint-- start by defining your terms. Precisely what does "all-powerful mean?)

[phil89]

4. Why don't

You define God since the "faithful" are the ones making the claim.

[TreasonousBastard]

5. What claim is that? And why...

would I define anything that I am not arguing?

[trotsky]

6. Actually, I've never seen a theologian properly address, let alone "demolish" questions like this.

They are trivial, yet interesting questions that poke at the simplistic concepts MOST believers have of their god(s).

Surely you've heard believers themselves describe their god as all-powerful, or all-loving, etc., right? So what's wrong with probing the consequences of such claims?

[TreasonousBastard]

7. Never met a Jesuit, have you? This sort of...

thing is designed to have no answer and anyone who says such contradictions make sense is approaching being a fool. The whole point of a paradox is the fascination with the seeming impossible.

And using them as evidence that belief is irrational is childish and entirely missing the point.

Sure, you can play with getting a believer confused, but when he fires back that you must first define the limits of omnipotence, then what do you do? Then we get into gravity, the concept of weight vs. mass or does "lift" include using an infinite lever...

There's that thing with a cat in a box that was brought up for similar reasons, but who would dare use it to slam physics? Just because you find it simplistically easy to say you don't believe doesn't make it simple.

[trotsky]

9. Do you believe a Jesuit's concept of god is basically the same as the average Christian's?

There's no need to engage in name-calling here. No sense in calling someone a fool. You're insulting a very large number of Christians by doing that.

Anyway, I don't believe in gods. It's not my responsibility to define that which I do not believe in. You appear to want to just silence a certain discussion. I understand if you don't want to participate, but then why are you trying to stop others from having it?

[TreasonousBastard]

10. I have no idea what the "average" Christian is and..

even less of an idea what one thinks of God. From the small ample of Christians I have known, I'd say very few of them deal with the metaphysics of the whole thing.

I was only saying that taking seriously the circular arguments invented by ancient Greeks for their versions of logic classes is foolish. And it is.

It may not be your responsibility to define what you don't believe in, but if you decide to enter a discussion about it, then you really should define what you are talking about.

I don't have any particular belief in the God of the Bible, but I do have questions about higher dimensional life, abstract physical phenomena at the center of the universe, or any other unobserved or unobservable points or forces that could be interpreted on our level as God. However, just saying "there is no God" is the lazy way out.

[trotsky]

11. I didn't say "there is no god." I said I don't believe in any.

There are lots of surveys out there indicating what the vast majority of Christians believe. Generally, it's in a personal, interventionist god who rewards its followers and punishes those who disobey. One who has power over all its creation and can do whatever it wants. Yes, a simplistic idea of a god, but yet vast numbers of people actually believe in it.

And, coincidentally, the believers (Christian, Muslim, and other) who end up causing most of the problems fit into that camp - believing in a vengeful, petty, jealous god who seeks to reward and punish. Pat Robertson, ISIS, the Taliban, etc.

I think it's worthwhile to engage that image of god. To challenge it, to make people actually have to think about it.

Like I said, if you won't want to have that discussion, then just don't participate. But please don't try to keep the discussion from happening.

[Fumesucker]

15. If omnipotence had limits it wouldn't be omnipotence, perhaps it could be termed quasipotence

[TreasonousBastard]

16. That's the problem with words and definitions...

omnipotence is like infinity-- it really has no meaning in our relative world. It's an abstract concept that can't be defined in our experience.

You can play with the idea, twist it and attempt to shape it, but in the end it really doesn't exist to us.

[Fumesucker]

17. The map is not the territory no matter how detailed it might be

I remain of the opinion that postulating there must be a creator because our reality is too complex to exist without one inevitably leads to an infinite cascade of creators where each of them is more capable than the previous.

[TreasonousBastard]

19. OK, I largely agree with you there, but...

the real question would be is the postulate true or not.

I tend to think the complexity makes it all the more difficult to find an answer. (Hence so many answers/gods...)

[No Vested Interest]

8. Feeling good, and we're having a beautiful, sunny day.

All is well.

[Cartoonist]

12. That's nice.

I'm feeling better today, and the weather is beautiful here in CA.

Thank you for being civil instead of all smug and smarmy like those haters who can't think of anything to ask an atheist.

[struggle4progress]

13. The dilemma of your first question hinges on the the law of the excluded middle --

so one resolution is simply to deny the law of the excluded middle in general (though it might still hold in special cases)

As LEJ Brouwer pointed out in the 1920s, this law abstracts our experience with finite sets and may fail to hold in general

A significant amount of work has been done on this: if, for example, we want a constructive theory of real numbers, we no longer have (for every pair of real numbers) "either r = s or r !=s"

Similar issues arise in the quantitative sciences: in general, measurement of physical constants produces only approximate equalities, up to experimental error, so we generally "prove" equality there only up to experimental error and therefore do not make general use of the law of the excluded middle

[TreasonousBastard]

18. Haven't seen that since my college days! But...

I think Schrodinger's Cat was evidence that it's not so much a law as a decent principle of thought.

And that cat is also evidence that the related Law of Noncontradiction (Nothing can both be and not be) is also not all that much of a law.

[struggle4progress]

20. There's an extensive literature on rejecting the excluded middle: look up "intuitionism"

The thinking is somewhat along these lines: we can assert "A" when we can prove it; and we can assert "A or B" when we can prove that we can prove either A or B. So we can assert "A or ~A" when we have some procedure that will ultimately either prove A or disprove it. Sometimes we might be able to assert "A or ~A" but generally we won't be able to do that

The issue is closely related to the law of double negation. The excluded middle and noncontradiction are pretty much the same thing, if one accepts double negation and deMorgan's laws, but the thinking that might lead one to reject excluded middle will also undermine deMorgan's laws and double negation

Noncontradiction, however, is not controversial in the way that the excluded middle can be. We need to think a bit more here about what negation means. Typically one has a list of statements one considers PROVED and another list of statements one considers ABSURD; and one wants these two lists be disjoint. One next grows the lists according to the following rules: any statement implied by an ACCEPTABLE statement can be added to the PROVED list; and any statement that implies an ABSURD statement can be added to the ABSURD list. We now allow ourselves to assert "~A" when A implies an ABSURD statement. What can we then say about "A and ~A"? From "A and ~A" we would know that A implies a statement on the ABSURD list, so we could put "A" on the ABSURD list; thus "A and ~A" implies a statement on the ABSURD list; and therefore "A and ~A" should also go on the ABSURD list, which shows we may assert "~(A and ~A)"

[okasha]

14. Overcast and unseasonably cool.

Roses and flowering trees blooming madly. Tomatoes setting fruit.

[goldent]

21. I'm always up for Questions for Believers although I don't have a lot of free time

Here goes...

1. Don't know about the rock thing - sounds like a question for philosophers

2. I would guess that God always existed. Physicists used to think the universe had existed forever, which is a reasonable argument, and worked until the Big Bang ideas came along. I hear this question a lot but to me it is a trivial issue, sort of like asking if God is male or female.

3. I think there is one God who is interpreted in many ways in the various religions. I chose the "God" I was born into, much like I chose my language and nationality. By the way, there is some evidence in the form of the Bible. Obviously not proof, but it is important to consider that some people who were only a generation or so older than Christ decided to write about him.

Beautiful day today.

[hrmjustin]

22. Do you think God exists in time like we do?

[goldent]

23. That is a deep question...

I think you are asking whether "time" has any meaning when it comes to God. Well, I'd guess that physical dimensions have no meaning when it comes to God, so maybe the same could be said of time.

[hrmjustin]

24. I wonder if god exists in past, present, and future and if God does than that is hard

Imagine.

I also sometimes think God might be winging it like us at times.