Stephen Fry On God

We can say that there is a commonly held belief in this group that there is an,

" Abrahamic God who is indeed a vile, narcissistic, tantrum-throwing, genocidal monster."

 

There is also the definition of each word in particular to consider or what is understood to be the relationship of terms like omnipresent or omnipotent for example to life experience. Omnipresent of itself doesn't imply anything but being everywhere. Doesn't say anything about the quality of that being. And again like it omnipotent could be all power is found there. Doesn't say anything about the nature of or activities of power.

So the simplistic arguments are less than appealing or interesting to the more thoughtfully considering but of course they do seem like gold to a few simplistic fools.

 

Here it seems indeed common to assume omnipresent/potent means God should cater to all our demands and wishes in regards to how we picture a happy life and if God doesn't and there is no divine intervention when someone falls of a cliff or gets a horrible disease God must be either entirely bogus or an angry asshole. Well guys, maybe there is a different option and it is that omnipotent just doesn't mean what we would like or can imagine. Personally I would think it is horrible to have a heavenly father intervening in our lifes but hey, whatever. It seems the omnipotent is just as often used to point out if God would be omnipotent there would be proof of Him displaying that omipotence so then it merely becomes the age old proof debate again...

 

Not sure what you ask me to understand?

I do understand that when you mentioned plagiarism you took thedope's lack of credits out of context (I agree this is a very trivial matter and maybe the term 'taking things out of context' is not the most fitting one?). And that when you mentioned privileges in your reply to what I said that you were either taking what I said out of context or were misinterpreting me. My guess is the first one. Either way it would be no biggie.

 

My daughter has had cancer and my brother has died with it. You make a point about pretty much anyone's standards. I see that this argument rests on a certain set of presumptions. The argument doesn't rest on all things being equal or an objective take. Pretty much anyone's standards and all powerful or all knowing are not the same on any level. Your meanings are fundamentally confused to begin with. If your concept of god is illogical why maintain it, not saying that you personally do. It doesn't make sense to consider an illogical explanation to be the logical and correct one.

 

That's what you get when something is omnipotent

 

I didn't leave anything out, I didn't comment on it. Your seeming is based on your parameters, so things I have left out are in your understanding. Further definition is required for free will and on and on yadda yadda and you have brought up the exercise many times in other subjects although those other subjects don't contain as many assumptions on your part as does this particular one.

What about omniscience precludes free will? I know that we may find contention and there could be an argument that the free will wouldn't know such a thing. So whereas there are the words free will, the experience of such a thing is fundamentally rare to some extent. The same could be said of omniscience in that if we are limited in our science it is impossible to come to accurate conclusions regarding the proportions of omniscience. We have no standard measure on any account so the if we assume arguments have the very limited value of talking sides in an argument.

 

There may be a lack of choices being made but there is no lack of free will. I also wonder how God's omnipotence or omniscience precludes free will. Because I have a hard time assuming it in all seriousness. Same with God being omnibenevolent in all absoluteness. I guess here it makes sense what dope says about invoking. For instance: to me God is (pretty much omni) benevolent because I love life and every possibility there is for us. It is not that I don't get sad or dislike it when something bad happens to my loved ones or myself, but to me it does not take away from the good things or that because it is part of this experience that is life it makes life not good. I guess if one happens to see this different God also appears less benevolent. But really this experience that is life is freaking awesome, not because life is always bliss but because of the good parts/moments. What would the good stuff mean if there was nothing else anyway? Would we even realize how good things are...? To picture a world without any suffering or pain and insist this world and whatever created it must suck because of it seems just as hysterical to me as living your life believing that God hates you for your sins or preferences. Really, how is the one outlook less ludicrous than the other?

 

The reason it may seem confused because the concept is a confused one to begin with. It is fascinating, particularly giving your daughter and brother's experiences, that you come off so contrarian to me in this explation.

MeAgain summed up the rest of it well.

 

"Pretty much omnibenevolent " is not omnibenevolent. Experiencing good in the world does not make the quality absolute in it. Atheists experience good too and I'm sure most of them cherish those experiences as well but 'omni' is referring to an absolute attribute. Your appeal to personal experience in terms of good I think makes a good case for relaxxx's notion of "God being a superego fantasy." I don't think attempting to deny the bad is beneficial either. Analyzing some of Fry's examples such as cancer in children may help illuminate your stance, as you suggest you object to his claims.

I think there are many bad social human ills such as war and famine that we could take it upon ourselves to eliminate without being a serious detriment to anyone's good. Probably alot more difficult with bad shit beyond our control like natural disasters and diseases.

 

That was to the point of thedope frequently quoting me.

 

The notion of atheists "invoking" God is no different than this illustration below. The particular attributes and existence of unicorns is an absurd assertion to begin with, as with Fry there is often an analysis ( in the form of a hypothetical) required on the purported attributes ascribed to the magical entity believed by the believers.



To relate it to video games, I "invoked" Link when I played Zelda on the Wii and am "invoking" Link now talking about it in the manner it's being used. This says nothing about Link, nor Zelda's actual existence outside the video game and my thoughts. If Hyrule actually exists, i'll wait until the place is found in objective reality and not let my impressions of the game distort the available evidence or lack thereof which is supposedly detailing it's existence.

 

Lol, ty. Concise.

Don't like the word God though, it's tainted with assumptions for anyone outside myself. I know this by the responses in this thread.


This conversation started with the Abrahamic ideals, but lets put that aside and actively try to progress the general understanding of the world instead of defending a description of something that when taken literally is quite obviously a crock of shit.

Since we can all probably agree that we all spawn from the same universe governed by the same perpetual driving force and habits of evolution and physics, lets look at these words "omni" words rationally, without unknowingly absorbing these popular Abrahamic notions into our supposedly rational arguments.

Omniscient. Whatever the conscious experience can know, at the time it considers itself to know(knowing not necessarily meaning accurate, but assuming the most obvious truth interpreted from the individuals collection of experiential data), it knows. This extends to plant life knowing how to seed, animals knowing what or what not to ingest. Life knowing what to do to get through the day. It knows.

Omnipotent. We are driven by the same abstract force. It is as powerful as it can possibly be.

Omnipresent. Since springing out of the same source, we can't really escape it. Here we sit, and we can travel the world if we want.


As far as omnibenevolence is concerned, it's more of an implication and to my knowledge it's not actually a characteristic of god that is mentioned in the Bible.. but here goes.

We can know pain and discomfort and we can adapt our circumstances to avoid it if we want. If "God" was truly malicious, I'd say it wouldn't let us know how fucked up of a situation we were getting into.

 

We are the verbs, God is an adjective.

 

A certain amount of knowledge does not equate to all-knowing. We may have some intrinsic aspects of 'knowing' but the vast amount of experience, humans in particular as well as many animals, is gaining our knowledge through learning.

Knowledge being contigent on time as you suggest, kind of flies in the face of omniscients as well.

Where do you gather it's "as powerful as it can possibly be?" From my understanding, we are driven if you will by 4 fundamental forces. Perhaps at a certain time they were all merged but that time is not ours.

Again, contigent on time, also a misrepresentation of omnipresence. Life as we know it, cannot even inhabit another planet at the current time, let alone the vast amounts of space.

 

wow there are some people who have a really distorted view of atheism. considering mr fry was being interview by a religious person. i am not surprised his response was the way it was. i am not an atheist my self i am a existential humanist. but i don't believe in god. in the organised religion view of god. i don't believe in some higher power. because facts show there is no such thing. and i thinking that people wont to believe in god, to make sense of a destructive cruel world. as one great man said religion is the opiate of the people/ god was designed to control. and it still continues too that said i believe people should be able to believe what they wont. i have many atheist friends, not one of them is militant in there view. so i like to know why some many people accuse atheist of being militant. not as philosophical or wordy as the posts before me. but that's my contribution.

 

You sir, are absolutely correct on all accounts and are proving the point I'm trying to make. We are an evolutionary process. When I say life, I don't mean biological specimens, I mean existence as a whole.

What there is now is all there possibly could be at this moment. An individual can know only as much as he has thought of up until now, which is based on the memories of experience leading up to this present moment. We occupy the frontier of existence, "riding the wave" of what is essentially the result of an arbitrary pattern of formation.

We experience this individually, and an individual cannot know it all, but by using the simple principle of addition we can form a much more cohesive contextual view of the kind of mystery we are a part, primitively referred to as the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient "God".