I'm specifically not trying to convince you about Aquinas, I simply stated that I think he put forward something that... well to me it's childishly silly. You clearly don't think so and you seem to want to debate Aquinas with me, others have made any points I could make far better. I assume you're acquainted with said arguments and you don't "buy into them" anymore than I buy into Aquinas. For that reason debating Aquinas with you seems useless. You even equate me dismissing his arguments as "blind".

That's fine if it's your opinion, I just don't agree and I find debating certain topics with people of a certain mindset to be useless. Don't equate that as me saying you're a "bad" person or something, I'm just not interested in debating religious philosophy with you. I can show you 10 pictures of mutilated, hacked apart, dead children for every justification of god. I think the god people posit is a cunt. If that dude's real, to me he's worse than a war criminal. That's my opinion, I don't expect anyone to particularly share it, but please don't insult me that I don't have my reasons for dismissing Aquinas.

"Jesus will send you to hell for many things.... BUT he loves you!!!" is more insightful to me than thousands of (again to me) tortured, illogical treatises trying to justify it all. It's fine if you don't agree, but Carlin had a lot of great points, and the beauty of insight is often that one can say better in a few words that which takes most people a book. I have actually read the bible in multiple languages, I've studied gnostic religions and specifically the Gospel of John. I've even attended seminary instruction (bet that would surprise most people who know me). So I would say I've read The Bible and understand it far better than your average Christian and Carlin's points are some of the biggest unanswered criticisms of Christianity (with the exception of a excruciatingly few who are working with a somewhat "fixed" and patched up version). Christians aren't obligated to answer said criticisms if they don't wish to, but I find it a bit silly when they stick their fingers in their ears and act like everyone else should just see their side of things when they haven't bothered with any of the things most of us take issue with.

As for the hell thing, go back and check, Jesus introduced the concept of hell, find a hell in the old testament that normal people could go to, you can't. Job's friends recommended he curse god and die as a way to end his suffering. According to Jesus that would send a devout man like Job straight to the hot-spot. But in the Old Testament death was an end to suffering.

To be fair, I do think The Bible contains some wisdom, but no more so than something like Aesop's Fables.

Sorry, not trying to be an ass, just explaining why further debate between us on what you believe to be the merits of Aquinas' writing is useless. I get your point, we simply have a very different world view.

Click on the link, hold down Ctrl + F, type in intellect, hit F3, and you're at the heading where he discusses topics related to God and intellect. Now hit backspace to clear that out, and type in perfect, then hit F3, then it takes you to that subject. Now do the same for will. I watched a 10 minute Carlin video, you can take 5 seconds to use your search function.

Now type in existence and do a search for that. You will find Five Ways, which are five arguments where the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises. It's not a matter of probability but of whether the premises are true.

Whatever God is supposed to be, he is supposed to be the ultimate explanation for why things happen in this world, so if it can be shown that there is a being that explains this, then it follows that at least to that extent it will have been proved that there is something in reality that corresponds to our idea of God. This argument is not intended to show that this being has all of the Christian attributes, but Aquinas does address those issues elsewhere in the Summa, if you care to use your search function.

Aquinas' arguments appeal to Aristotelian teleology, while ID assumes a non-teleological mechanistic conception of the natural world. ID is hung up on things like irreducible complexity, whether or not evolution is true, and what appears to be the best explanation. It uses God of the Gaps reasoning that is vulnerable to new scientific research showing that something isn't as irreducibly complex we first thought. Regardless of what people on those matters, they have absolutely no impact on Aquinas' arguments work because final causality is an entirely different subject. Furthermore, Aquinas is unconcern with what appears to be the best explanation; he is concerned about what is necessarily true.

Please show me where I claimed to know that.

I try to keep an open mind and if someone presents me with a good argument, then I will change it. That has certainly happened a good number of times since I started joining forums.

As to the pictures, could it be possible for God exist if there was only one instance of a mutilated child? Or one instance of a child falling down the stairs? How could a loving God allow anyone to stub their toe? If fact, if God only allowed us to feel either mild joy or great joy, then people would still complain about God allowing them to experience mild joy when they could be experiencing great joy. So it boils down to wondering how a loving God, who wants us to know, feel, and express great love, allow us to experience anything other than some sort of stasis field that had no change in experience.

Using existence of suffering against God is using an emotional argument that I don't think stands up to rational inquiry. Obviously, you think differently, and I didn't mean insult you by saying that you didn't have your reasons for rejecting God. However, it seems to me that your reasons for rejecting Aquinas have nothing to do with his arguments, and if so, that would be blind.

If a parent punishes their child for doing something wrong, does that bring into their love for their child into question? God isn't just loving, but He is also just.

I find myself agreeing with Soyeong on that one. I can not possibly imagine a personal god who lets just one kid suffer. What terrible thing did the little bugger do? Christianity obviously believes that there's a significance to being human, to being in this sweating, suffering, frail little form. Maybe having assumed it is necessary for experiencing true bliss? For paradise or anything at all to have any meaning at all? After all, for having unimaginably suffered for a few short years, those children will live in beyond unimaginably bliss for eternity.

Maybe a caring god cannot intervene precisely because he loves us so much, and all of us equally? Should he come up with some suffering cap, and pluck everyone who has reached it from the earth? Sorry, wartime child, had you been raped just one more time, I'd have taken you in?

I can imagine a personal god that let our world happen. What's more, I can imagine him in certain Christian terms. Maybe, despite knowing about its necessity, the suffering we are in hurts him so much that he willingly partakes in it, and Jesus Christ is how that manifested itself to our eyes? Not a great lord, but a simple craftsman who went through shit as bad as any of us? Or maybe, and that's something that appeals to me even more, Jesus was human through and through and he was the only one of us to come just a tiny bit closer to god here on earth. I find myself reminded of one of Lord Dunsany's fantasy short stories, in which one of the characters struck up the chant called Dolorous, which tells of Love scorning Death, and of Death's laughter. Maybe Jesus was the one human being whose love was so great, that little bit closer to god's, that it defeated death itself? That death could not hold him, and spat him back out into the world, and having no place anywhere else anymore, he ascended to heaven right then and there. Maybe that is all it ever took? Just a single one of us. Just a single one of us and all of humanity is saved. Or all of sentient life. Or all of biological life. I cannot find anything primitive about such believes.

I have read it, as I said. There is no proof that a First Cause is the same thing as the beings noted in the conclusion of the other Five Ways. Unless you show it to me, I am not going to read the whole thing again. And again, First Cause itself is debatable. We have a much better understanding of causality today thanks to the advances in physics. It is much more complex than Aquinas posits.

You can't assume in the premises that which you are going to prove. It's circular reasoning. Also, if something exists, there must be a possibility for it not to exist.

ID is not totally different. It (usually) makes an analogical argument, but yes, it is a much poorer one and not worth discussing here.

Aquinas, however, clearly presents design and purpose as a product of intelligence. Just look at what I underlined. How is that not anthropocentric?

That is the magnitude of what you are claiming. You are not just extrapolating onto tomorrow, you are making claims that concern the universe as a whole, and you can not do that. It's also called the fallacy of composition.

When a parent punishes a child they usually don't kill them, maim them, or ground them "forever". That is a lot more analogous to the whole getting sent to hell thing. It's not a spanking or a "teaching moment" that consists of tough love, this is a final, unending judgement that includes such things as enduring torture and anguish. This is a laughable comparison and just what in the hell does justice mean in this context? The list of infractions that supposedly send you to hell has historically included things so minor and often out of the control of the "sinner" that it's laughable to call it loving or just.

Maybe a omnipotent and omniscient god could come up with a better plan for us to obtain "unending bliss". Seriously, if this was a man knowingly making these decisions, even one that could prove that those children will get it "made up to them" you'd raise your hand to vote to put him to death.

Seriously, this hand wringing justification for "suffering" doesn't fly with me, we aren't talking about a tummy ache or a stubbed toe here, we are talking about people that will exist in a state of unending torment until they die in some cases. We are talking about people who hack apart children in front of their mothers, who force children to kill their own parents if they want to live, people who've been sold into sexual slavery at young ages. Do you know what this kind of torture is?

We are talking about a god with a plan so shitty (according to some) that the only ways to NOT go to hell are 100% completely denied to a great portion of the world's population. These unfortunates, often through nothing more than unfortunate birth will endure unending hellfire for eternity.

I'm supposed to believe that guy, that knew all that and couldn't be arsed to come up with a half way fair or decent plan for this world is a god that loves us? Seriously, that guy is a sociopath, he's worse than the Christian devil in that he had to the power to do something and did NOTHING. But he'll happily consign you to hell for any number of sins of omission. What kind of a hypocritical bastard is that?

No, sorry, there is no excuse for a god who allows this kind of suffering, I'm supposed to buy he made the Big Bang (or whatever the fuck) happen and somehow his hands are tied? Yeah, sorry, fuck that, don't buy it, it doesn't even make any sense.
Shit as bad as any of us? I'm sorry, was he forced to kill his own parents? Was he ever sexually abused? Did he ever get cancer and painfully waste away over the final years of his life? He was tortured for a few days and then killed, but there were much much worse things that could have happened to him at the time. He was a middle class person (his dad was a craftsman) that supposedly was showered with gifts from his birth and had his ass kissed by many from before he hit puberty.

Yeah, I get the whole Gethsemane thing, it's about as silly as the rest of it. Arguing that this guy suffered in his mortal life as bad as anyone is fucking ludicrous, even according to the bible he was pampered and spoiled from birth.
Those beliefs are primitive, Jesus claimed that failing to follow him or repent would result in unending torment. That doesn't sound enlightened, that's a religion based on fear, that that basis of fear was the driving force of Christianity for over 1000 more years doesn't offer up a very good pedigree. It's a barbaric religion.

Philosophically, yes, it is impossible for the Christian presentation of god to exist if the best plan he could come up with involves that level of anguish when it was well within his power to prevent it. Such a god would not be loving or worthy of worship, one could not even trust such a god, he's a sociopath and a liar (apparently).

Yes, he obviously was afforded the opportunity to go out into the world and tell of his believes. But what do you know what happened while he was hanging on that cross? Maybe "he suffered for us all" means that he had to live through all the pain and sorrow that has ever been experienced and ever will.

Ah, Christianity has affected the core values of our Western society, which, all in all, I consider a good thing.

I honestly find your views only moderately more sophisticated than the ones of the people who believe the bible is the literal word of god. Or, more likely, they represent an argument primarily against those people, which makes them somewhat trivial by necessity. "Jesus said..." - You know, of course, that the gospels have been written by a bunch of guys many decades after the fact. A bunch of guys who were perfectly aware that what they're offering is their take on the legend and not a completely accurate account of what transpired.

Again, Christian imagery represents one way (or rather, many different ways) to realize one's spirituality. To try to get to a concept of a personal, caring god - which, I admit, is the most difficult part and the one I fear will elude me forever. An extremely powerful way, you won't deny that, which speaks to millions of people. Say Jesus (who I understand was a historical person) never got nailed on a cross. Isn't the image of him hanging there nonetheless an incredibly powerful metaphor for human suffering, one that helps many, many people to come to terms with their own?

Some of your posts lead me to believe that you're a fan of Tolkien. I assume you're aware that he was a devout Catholic and considered his work an expression of his religious feelings. In a way, it is his gospel. What about that? Do these books mean anything special to you, or do you consider them just a bunch of exciting tales?

I find your summary dismissal of every aspect of Christianity off-putting and shortsighted. In fact, it strikes me as borderline anti-intellectual. To again mention Michelangelo's Pieta, I think it's one of the most moving depictions of love, empathy and suffering I have ever encountered. And it represents a direct depiction of a scene from the Bible. Don't you see worth there?

Religious people are pretty much the most intolerant people in the world.

There's literally no more reason to believe that than any other belief from that era, including the ones that involved Jewish people sacrificing animals to appease the desert devils (really not kidding here). If he was really reliving all our pain why did he need to be nailed up there, I mean he certainly wasn't the first or the last, he could have just felt the pain of thousands of others.

As far as I understand the historians there were dozens of whack jobs doing the John the Baptist and Jesus thing yearly, because they were occupied Rome and had such a strong messianic component to their religion. Seriously as much as the Jewish leaders hated the supposed Jesus, they hated Rome more. If anyone had half a thought he wasn't just another of their equivalent to a televangelist they wouldn't have helped the Romans execute him.
You've got this entirely backwards, religion is man-made and reflects our natural morals. This is why there is little difference in basic morality between any culture. Anthropology has backed this up for decades. Our western morality doesn't come from Christianity, Christianity merely reflects our innate sense of morals, just like so many other world religions do.

Obviously the evil and power hungry know to how exploit this to perpetrate evil, but we all know what went down so there's no use in repeating it here.
Not to me, the idea that some god will make up for the wrongs of this world and the people who needlessly suffer has been the cause of more inaction in the face of suffering, more willingness to punish those who only "might" be guilty, and other "god will sort it out" immorality than pretty much anything else I can think of.

I have never met people who think it's more of a travesty to let an innocent man rot in prison or even be executed than an atheist. I have never met more (in aggregate) people more concerned about people needlessly suffering than those who think this life is all we get. I have met many aid workers of all beliefs (or non-belief) and my experience is that their basic goodness has nothing to do with their religion or lack thereof and everything to do with them as people (and their privilege to be able to do something about it).

So no, I don't find the Christian myth to be all that motivating towards good, if it was we'd certainly have a better society in the US. I can inspire more people to do something by putting them in the same room as a disadvantaged person for 2 hours than years of preaching by their pastor.
Tolkien's works are many things to me. One thing they are not is a Christian apology (one that would be is The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe series). I'm not sure there's a credible argument to be made that it is. I also think Tolkien would have made as good a writer if he'd been a Buddhist. Seriously, the dude was a scholar, most of his work was an excuse to play with languages, a great passion of his. He may have seen his struggle of good vs. evil from a religious perspective, I don't know, but good vs. evil is a universal human theme and in no way confined to Catholicism or Christianity in general.
Did you not read how much I have studied Christianity in my lifetime? I assure you my dismissal is anything but "summary". If you want to judge it as anything else, that's up to you and your opinions, but calling it summary is simply silly, I've studied Christianity more than most Christians by several times.

And why is Christianity so damned special anyway? It's not special to me, I dismiss all religions equally. It shocks me to no end when I get into these apologist conversations and they're always about.... dun, dun, dun Christianity. Why not Judaism, Gnosticism, Islam, Buddhism, the Cult of Isis, or anything else? All of those could claim credit for every single apology that has been put forth in defense of Christianity in this thread.

So why Christianity?

Art has been inspired by any number of things, if the only redeeming quality of Christianity (which is hardly the only belief system to inspire art) is that it inspires us to make pretty art, then it stands in company with quite a lot of things including some the most base parts of human nature.

Islam gets a fair share of those. Buddhism is relatively unknown in the west. People have heard about it, but not read any Buddhist texts or studied it beyond getting a pop culture overview. Judaism is self-critical enough to be immune. A jew could respond to any criticism with just, "No thanks, we got it covered."

Agreed. I like the Jesus one better, though.


Because that gave us a powerful image to cling to?


Didn't say that Christianity caused our morality, it however influenced it.


The one thing I agree with you is that I don't want my political leaders to be Christian. Not because they can't be good ones, but because they tend not to be. I want them to be solely concerned with this world; safer that way.


I'm just mentioning what Tolkien himself has said many, many times. Stuff like Galadriel being his Mary, as I posted in another thread, I didn't make that up. And Tolkien might have been just as good or better a writer had he been Buddhist, but he would definitely have been a completely different one compared to the one you know and love.


Ah, sorry. Wrong term. I thought 'summary' meant 'wholesale', didn't know about the meaning of 'summary dismissal'.


It's not the only redeeming quality, no.

And Christianity isn't the only thing that has inspired art, but it just so happens that the works of art that mean the most to me tend to be decidedly Christian. My 5 favourite film directors for example are Carl Theodor Dreyer, Frederico Fellini, Andrei Tarkovsky, Wong Kar-Wai and Lars von Trier. Three of 'em Christian, one anti-religious and one Buddhist (to which degree, I do not know). My favourite movie is very much Christian. And there's nothing primitive or barbaric about it, nothing at all.
Not sure why you seem to fail to understand that I'm not claiming a superiority of Christianity (I'm thinking of the comment of how Tolkien wouldn't have been a worse writer had he not been Christian or the one that Christianity isn't the only belief system to inspire art). I'm saying that it's the one way of realizing one's spirituality that appeals to me the most. And to many other people I know, who aren't primitive or barbaric either.

God is just. This is why he commands you to stone to death a woman who was raped and then refused to marry her rapist.

HOW THAT ISN'T JUST FOR YOU?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr1I3mBojc0

I'm talking mostly about Christianity because that just happens to be the religion I'm most familiar with and interested in. It is special to me. Isn't that perfectly obvious? I don't know all that much about Islam, for example, and as such treat it as as valid a belief system as any other. Your implied belief that someone arguing for certain values of Christianity automatically means that said someone doesn't allow other religions the same values betrays your own attitudes. It didn't even occur to me before reading that paragraph of yours. I'm not claiming that Christians, or atheists (which, again, I belong to) or Buddhists or whatever are in any way superior. You are.