Occasionally a theist makes an argument so amusingly stupid that it would be a shame not to share it with a larger audience. This is one of those occasions.
On another thread, we’ve been discussing the unloving way in which God — supposing that he exists at all — is treating the victims of Hurricane Harvey (and the soon-to-be victims of Hurricane Irma, unfortunately). In the course of that discussion, fifthmonarchyman — a Christian — made the following, er, memorable argument:
I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.
– Isaiah 45:7
keiths:
Yes, and creating disaster for his children is exactly what every loving father sets out to do. Right, Mung?
Nothing says “I love you” like drowning someone or wiping out their possessions.
At that point fifthmonarchyman got the bright idea that he could defend God by arguing that God is not our father. He wrote:
quote:
the Originator of the heavens and the earth! How could it be that He should have a child without there ever having been a mate for Him – since it is He who has created everything, and He alone knows everything? – Sura 6:101
and
and say: “All praise is due to God, who begets no offspring, and has no partner in His dominion, and has no weakness, and therefore no need of any aid” -and [thus] extol His limitless greatness. – Sura 17:111
end quote:
That’s right, folks. Fifthmonarchyman quoted the Quran to argue against the idea that God is our father — forgetting that the latter idea comes straight from Jesus. What are the first two words of the Lord’s Prayer? Our Father.
Seeing fifth — a Christian — use the Quran to argue (unwittingly) against Jesus is one of the stupidest moves I’ve seen in a long while. I therefore renominate fifth for the title of World’s Worst Apologist.
After posting his comment, fifth belatedly realized that he had just thrown Jesus under the bus. He tried to undo the damage:
Get it keiths ?
A loving father is not the default understanding of God. Not by a long shot.
To know him as Father you need to have met his Son. Once you have met his Son you are simply not dissuaded when bad things happen.
peace
It’s a bit too late to backpedal, fifth.
This is a good time to quote Augustine again, on the topic of Christians who make fools of themselves:
…we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.
The inanity goes even deeper. I’ll elaborate in the comments.
From a CNN story:
Who needs electricity when you have God’s “love”?
Vincent Torley:
God’s love is so unshakable that he’ll shake a building until it collapses on you.
250+ dead in Mexico, Vincent. Your God could have prevented that, but chose not to. Is that a “steadfast, unshakable love greater than any of us can possibly imagine”?
Your claim is ridiculous.
A loving God would give every person alive their own personal portable electric generator and an endless bottle of kerosene. What kind of sick God doesn’t give that.
That’s exactly what happened to me! I tried to share it with keiths, but he wanted nothing to do with God’s love.
Mung,
That’s because you asked keiths if he wanted that. keiths wants a world where he doesn’t have to choose. He doesn’t want to decide where he goes on holiday, or how many children he will have, or what time to wake up-because what if he decides wrong? So if there are no decisions, he can never make a wrong one!
That’s how God can show his love for keiths. No more consequences- just whip cream.
Phoodoo, if I asked the question rather than Keith maybe you will answer it.
If your children were in a school that you knew was going to collapse and kill most of the children in it, and you knew exactly what time that was going to happen, would you leave your children in the school?
phoodoo,
How embarrassing that you’re afraid to answer my questions when I so easily answered yours.
Just to keep you squirming, here are mine again:
Good. I see that Timothy is pressing you for answers, too.
Why do atheists think of God as a Sky Daddy? I mean, don’t they mock theists for that very reason? Go figure.
Because Mung just can’t imagine that God would treat the people he loves with kindness, short of being a “Sky Daddy”.
OK, Mung, then answer my questions in terms of your powerful, loving, non-Sky-Daddy God.
Mung,
Don’t forget to answer my questions in terms of your sophisticated, non-sky-daddy God.
Also, phoodoo has some questions to answer from Timothy and me.
In what kind of world Timothy? In world where a God has the power to prevent anything difficult from ever happening to you? And if a God did prevent those things, you would need to do nothing right? In such a world, you wouldn’t even need to move would you?
In this world, you need to move don’t you, or you might starve to death. Your children might starve to death. You might freeze to death. Your children might fall off a cliff. But in the world you are describing, you wouldn’t need to move, you wouldn’t need to choose, you wouldn’t need to think, or act or do anything, because God is going to make all the choices for you, which prevent anything bad from happening. So your entire premise is flawed. Your are talking about a world without choices, without consequences. Without both good and bad existing. So in such a world, there could never be buildings collapsing, because that involves a world with choices, not the world you are talking about.
keiths doesn’t get this. The reason for this could be many. Maybe because God didn’t give keiths the skills to understand it. Maybe he gets tired easily, when he has to think too long? Maybe one of those consequences in a world with consequences was that when keith tried hitting himself on the head as hard as he can with a skillet, it didn’t bounce off of him like he was made of silly putty like he was hoping, and that’s why today he can’t understand. Who knows?
Do you? If you can’t understand why your question is impossible, in a world with consequences, well, sorry. God can’t do the impossible.
Timothy,
Maybe there is a world with only trees. In that world, the trees don’t have to make decisions. They don’t have to find food and water, it is brought to them. Or not. They don’t care. If the trees children die of starvation, or burn in a fire, the trees don’t care. What is caring to a tree? What is a decision to a tree? What is love to a tree?
Trees don’t get tired. And even if they do, so what, the tree doesn’t care. Keiths wants to be a tree. He wants everyone to be a tree. keiths is angry that he is not a tree.
phoodoo,
You didn’t answer Timothy’s question. He asked what you would do, not God:
A reminder for Mung:
Don’t forget to answer my questions below in terms of your sophisticated, non-sky-daddy God.
If you loved someone, would you purposely trap them under the rubble of a collapsed building? Or drown them? Or drive them from their home and destroy their possessions?
Your supposedly sophisticated, powerful, loving, non-sky-daddy God does that. Why?
One thing is missing; proof that God cases all this… you don’t have it. You never did. You will never have it…. pity…such a good idea… lol
J-Mac,
But you see, keiths doesn’t care if God causes it, he wants him to prevent it. Everything. keiths wants to be a tree. Trees don’t get lost hiking. Trees don’t cry.
Don’t be afraid, phoodoo. Be a big boy and answer Timothy’s question.
He is a waste of time…
I have keiths on Ignore. He’s a waste of my time. I answer his questions but he won’t answer mine. He fails to support his claims. He makes things up. He’s insulting. He’s boring. He’s repetitive. He’s unimaginative. He’s irrational. He’s petty. He’s never wrong. Even Tom English and Kantian Naturalist have him on Ignore. He adores Salvador. He hates cats. He hates babies. He’s from a state I don’t like for the sole reason that he’s from that state. He thinks I couldn’t find my way to southeast Texas if I had a southeast Texas roadmap. He hangs out with slow fourth-graders [creepy!]. So many reasons … can’t list them all.
ETA: I can’t wait to read his OP on divine simplicity.
Mung,
Don’t forget to mention the real reasons: I ask questions you can’t answer, and I call your bluffs, much to your embarrassment.
I’m calling your bluff right here:
keiths,
How you ever heard of a tree being sad k’eit’h’s?
Timothy’s question is so simple, phoodoo:
Why are you afraid to answer such a straightforward question?
Phoodoo? Mung?
It isn’t hard to figure out why phoodoo is afraid of Timothy’s question.
Or why Mung is afraid of mine.
Phoodoo, I’m not asking you about God, or about trees. It’s simply a question about what you would do yourself in the scenario I outlined.
I won’t repeat the question again, as Keiths has done this. But its a simple yes/no answer.
For example, my answer is “no”. What’s yours?
Answering questions is a kind of partition search. Each question they answer removes a significant proportion of all available answers from future consideration. If they answer sufficient questions eventually they’ll be in a place that even they recognise as absurd. Hence the observed behaviour.
Can anyone play?
Firstly, there’s a false dichotomy. There are other answers than “yes” or “no”. My answer is “impossible to state without clarification”. The whole scenario is a confusion due to extending the logic of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent entity to the product of that entity’s creation. Bear with me a moment, I struggle with hypothetical concepts that have no root in reality but I’ll have a go. God is 3O but what is to say that he can post-manipulate his creation, if that creation is a reality with physical properties that she creates. She creates a universe, a reality with gravity. Gravity is a property of that reality. Maybe another property of that reality is if, even if you are 3O God, if you break those rules you break that reality.
(I said I wasn’t good with hypotheticals 🙁 )
And then there’s the issue of Heaven but I’ve been over that.
OMagain:
Your analysis is spot on.
Given a choice between running away or backing themselves into a corner, they choose the humiliation of running away. It’s slightly less painful, because it allows them to pretend — at least to themselves — that they could have answered the questions if they’d really tried.
They aren’t fooling anyone but themselves, of course.
Timothy, to phoodoo:
Alan:
You’re making the same mistake as phoodoo, Alan. Read the question again, this time paying attention to what Timothy is actually asking:
phoodoo?
Mung?
Still no answers from phoodoo or Mung.
From the Guardian:
As she spoke to reporters, [Mayor] Cruz [of San Juan, Puerto Rico] became emotional. This is a transcript of her remarks:
We are dying here. And I cannot fathom the thought that the greatest nation in the world cannot figure out the logistics for a small island of 100 miles by 35 miles. So, mayday, we are in trouble.
FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Administration] asks for documentation, I think we’ve given them enough documentation.
They had the gall this morning – look at this [gestures to two large binders filled with paper] – they had the gall this morning of asking me: ‘What are your priorities, mayor?’
Well, where have you been?
And I have been very respectful of the FEMA employees. I have been patient but we have no time for patience any more.
So, I am asking the president of the United States to make sure somebody is in charge that is up to the task of saving lives.
They were up to the task in Africa when Ebola came over. They were up to the task in Haiti [after the earthquake of 2010]. As they should be. Because when it comes to saving lives we are all part of one community of shared values.
I will do what I never thought I was going to do: I am begging. I am begging anyone that can hear us to save us from dying. If anybody out there is listening to us, we are dying. And you are killing us with the inefficiency and bureaucracy.
We will make it with or without you because what stands behind me is all due to the generosity of other people.
Again, this is what we got last night: four pallets of water, three pallets of meals and 12 pallets of infant food. Which, I gave them to Comerío, where people are drinking out of a creek.
So I am done being polite. I am done being politically correct. I am mad as hell because my people’s lives are at stake. And we are but one nation. We may be small, but we are huge in dignity and zealous for life.
So I’m asking members of the press to send a mayday call all over the world. We are dying here. And if we don’t stop and if we don’t get the food and the water into people’s hands, what we we are going to see is something close to a genocide.
So, Mr Trump, I am begging you to take charge and save lives. After all, that is one of the founding principles of the United States of North America. If not, the world will see how we are treated not as second-class citizens but as animals that can be disposed of. Enough is enough.
I have no idea whether Mayor Cruz is a believer, but if so, she ought to be demanding action from God, too.
Christians, why doesn’t your God step in and solve some of these problems? And when he doesn’t, why do you go on believing that “God is love”? (1 John 4:8)
Christianity is a religion for people who can’t — or won’t — think.
A lame response to the theological problems posed by Hurricane Irma:
Odd that Mung, who is so critical of “Sky Daddy” conceptions of God, is afraid to answer my questions in terms of his sophisticated, non-sky-daddy God.
You’d expect him to be proud, not ashamed.
Atheist Credo: If only God would come down from heaven, take on human form, and allow himself to suffer, be crucified and die, THEN I would believe in God.
The crucifixion story is one of the most ridiculous stories in the bible. How is a bloody self sacrifice that no one asked for of any benefit to anyone? Speaking personally, i would never want anyone to commit such an atrocious act on my behalf.
Timothy,
Heaven!
“Pie in the sky when you die!”
Jesus came once and hardly anybody believed him…
Religious people and others saw him preform miracles, they acknowledge his miracles and yet, they still schemed to killed him…Why?
Would it be any different today???
Mung,
See my response here.
Mung has avoided the questions again.
Looks like his sophisticated, non-sky-daddy God fails just as badly as Sky Daddy does when the topic is love.
Will Mung and phoodoo ever summon the courage to answer the questions? It’s doubtful. They’re clearly spooked.
But while we wait, let’s talk about the Las Vegas shooting. Here’s a question for those, like phoodoo, who think that evil is the price we pay for choice, in God’s great plan:
How did God determine that 58 dead and 515 injured (or whatever the latest toll is) was exactly the right amount of “choice” to offer the gunman, who clearly would have chosen to kill more if he’d been given the opportunity? It clearly must have been exactly the right amount of choice.
Praise be to your wise and benevolent God, who so precisely tunes the amount of choice available to us all, giving us the best of all possible worlds.
And what about all those people who lived before the invention of high-rise hotels and automatic weapons? How does God justify having deprived them of the choices he offered to Stephen Paddock?
Will phoodoo be protesting on their behalf, since choice is so important?
The whole “choice” defense is stupid.
And Mung is not only afraid to reply here; he’s also avoiding OMagain’s thread, which was inspired by a comment of Mung’s.
Why do you worship a God whose behavior you are so ashamed of, Mung?
I have OMagain on Ignore for being an insufferable troll. Why would I bother to read his OP? I’m not like John Harshman, I can ignore an OP. I’m sure the thread is captivating though.
Mung,
Don’t worry about it. You would fail there as badly as you’ve failed here.