Into It
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- Aug 30, 2008
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I hunger for refutations of the following since my present company was unable to provide me with them.
Is not anything misrepresentative of reality a deception? Perhaps then, a deception is not good or bad per se, if in the instance of its being put into place naturally or by accident it misrepresents. Certainly though, if a deception is designed and set it place with a clear purpose, its designer is a deceiver. And a deceiver could only be good if he misrepresents something wicked or harmful, in this he is a protector. Even then, to label his actions good or bad relies on the situation and depends on the observer; it is a debate of ethics for another time. If a deceiver reveals what is true and then conceals evidence of its proof, surely he means only to confuse. Confusion is a state that is most positive only if all reality is harmful. In confusion, like madness or delusion, reality cannot be grasped, and while the state itself is not positive, it may be a lesser of two evils. In all cases then, confusion is evil to some degree. Thus one who intentionally confuses is a particularly wicked specie of deceiver.
A particularly low way to confuse would be to create a good deal of evidence that leads to Conclusion A, while saying that the less reasonable Conclusion B is true. To sharpen this character’s fangs, we could say that he delights in his power to punish those who choose to believe in Conclusion A.
Of course, this is applicable to the Christian God and his many inconsistencies. I hesitate to give a list of examples, but I will say briefly that it does not appear, as a reasonable conclusion, that planets appeared a day after light, or that animals were created after plants in the same fixed increment of time that man was created after animals. The most rudimentary geology shows that the layers of rock that constitute the earth’s surface were created at very different times. The fossils within also provide evidence that the earth is quite old. Cain and Abel’s geneaology, provided in Genesis, shows that the earth is very new. Since the scientific evidence of an old earth is so abundant, most Christians today believe in the ‘Gap Theory,’ which states that the “days” were really much longer than days and that there were gaps between them. So, they take Genesis as a metaphor, though the rest of the Old Testament, which is not quite as easily or obviously refuted to the Christian, is still widely regarded as literal. If even one statement of God’s is a lie, then all we thought we knew of him crumbles.
The Christian may say that my argument is fallible because believing in the God of the Bible is as reasonable as if not more reasonable than rejecting him. If I thought that this argument was decent, I would spend more time refuting it, but experience has taught me that proponents of this argument relinquish it relatively quickly in reasonable debate, and then they turn to “faith.”
It may be worth mentioning as a side-note that if we are supposed to believe in God through faith, then reason is not the gift I thought it was. It is a curse and a mockery. As any chain is only as strong as its weakest link, so faith is only as valuable as it is supported by reason. As the strongest link in the chain is an irrelevant matter, so too is faith irrelevant as its only value is awarded by reason. For instance, a man drives off a cliff and may have faith that he will not die when he hits the ground. This faith would be weak and of little value, and in fact no man would have this faith, because he would analyze what he knows about blunt force trauma, and his faith would be near worthless, if faith can be said to have any value at all. My faith in a round earth is worth more. I have not ever seen the entire planet at once, except through photographs that I cannot be sure were real. But I have also heard stories of planes flying in a straight line and eventually arriving right where they left off. My reason tells me the earth is round; there is enough evidence to convince me. My faith in this could be considered of more value than the faith of the previous example. Since the values I am ascribing to faith come directly from the validity of the reason used to assess the situations to which the faith pertains, the value is only stamped onto faith: faith truly has no value. And so, anyone who falls back on faith is only doing so because reason fails them.
So is God a deceiver? Or is this 'God' simply not God?
Is not anything misrepresentative of reality a deception? Perhaps then, a deception is not good or bad per se, if in the instance of its being put into place naturally or by accident it misrepresents. Certainly though, if a deception is designed and set it place with a clear purpose, its designer is a deceiver. And a deceiver could only be good if he misrepresents something wicked or harmful, in this he is a protector. Even then, to label his actions good or bad relies on the situation and depends on the observer; it is a debate of ethics for another time. If a deceiver reveals what is true and then conceals evidence of its proof, surely he means only to confuse. Confusion is a state that is most positive only if all reality is harmful. In confusion, like madness or delusion, reality cannot be grasped, and while the state itself is not positive, it may be a lesser of two evils. In all cases then, confusion is evil to some degree. Thus one who intentionally confuses is a particularly wicked specie of deceiver.
A particularly low way to confuse would be to create a good deal of evidence that leads to Conclusion A, while saying that the less reasonable Conclusion B is true. To sharpen this character’s fangs, we could say that he delights in his power to punish those who choose to believe in Conclusion A.
Of course, this is applicable to the Christian God and his many inconsistencies. I hesitate to give a list of examples, but I will say briefly that it does not appear, as a reasonable conclusion, that planets appeared a day after light, or that animals were created after plants in the same fixed increment of time that man was created after animals. The most rudimentary geology shows that the layers of rock that constitute the earth’s surface were created at very different times. The fossils within also provide evidence that the earth is quite old. Cain and Abel’s geneaology, provided in Genesis, shows that the earth is very new. Since the scientific evidence of an old earth is so abundant, most Christians today believe in the ‘Gap Theory,’ which states that the “days” were really much longer than days and that there were gaps between them. So, they take Genesis as a metaphor, though the rest of the Old Testament, which is not quite as easily or obviously refuted to the Christian, is still widely regarded as literal. If even one statement of God’s is a lie, then all we thought we knew of him crumbles.
The Christian may say that my argument is fallible because believing in the God of the Bible is as reasonable as if not more reasonable than rejecting him. If I thought that this argument was decent, I would spend more time refuting it, but experience has taught me that proponents of this argument relinquish it relatively quickly in reasonable debate, and then they turn to “faith.”
It may be worth mentioning as a side-note that if we are supposed to believe in God through faith, then reason is not the gift I thought it was. It is a curse and a mockery. As any chain is only as strong as its weakest link, so faith is only as valuable as it is supported by reason. As the strongest link in the chain is an irrelevant matter, so too is faith irrelevant as its only value is awarded by reason. For instance, a man drives off a cliff and may have faith that he will not die when he hits the ground. This faith would be weak and of little value, and in fact no man would have this faith, because he would analyze what he knows about blunt force trauma, and his faith would be near worthless, if faith can be said to have any value at all. My faith in a round earth is worth more. I have not ever seen the entire planet at once, except through photographs that I cannot be sure were real. But I have also heard stories of planes flying in a straight line and eventually arriving right where they left off. My reason tells me the earth is round; there is enough evidence to convince me. My faith in this could be considered of more value than the faith of the previous example. Since the values I am ascribing to faith come directly from the validity of the reason used to assess the situations to which the faith pertains, the value is only stamped onto faith: faith truly has no value. And so, anyone who falls back on faith is only doing so because reason fails them.
So is God a deceiver? Or is this 'God' simply not God?