Contemplating the possibility of God

Debate Room
169

Any product, be it clove powder or any natural product, until it has been properly researched by SCIENCE, can not be trusted. And once properly tested, it’s status changes from “quack remedy” to “medicine”.

@Tia_Thompson on the surface your kind suggestion appears to be act of wonderful charity and compassion. But you did not apply science to your suggestion to clove powder, you failed to mention that clove powder can cause permanent and large-scale damage to a person.

From Cloves: Health benefits and uses

According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, multiple hazards are associated with clove oil. It may cause skin, eye, and respiratory irritation, or an allergic reaction on the skin. It is also flammable and could be fatal if it is swallowed and goes into the airway.

Another incident involved a 2-year-old child who drank 5 to 10 ml of clove oil. The child experienced multiple medical problems, including, liver damage, and problems with blood clotting.

I suggest you refrain from offering such unsupported suggestions because the outcome could be serious injury or death, and you would be held accountable in the eyes of the law and courts.

170

You really want to end that pain? Nothing beats a rolling pin upside the head! You won’t feel a thing for days.

171

That electric belt reminds me of the diseased ramblings of Lanz von Liebenfels. Who, when peddling his particularly interesting brand of racism mixed with freaky excursions into the world of “Biblical exegesis”, came up with the wacky theory that humans were originally “electric supermen”, and lost this status through miscegenation. I kid you not.

His magnum opus (you can find it online if you’re diligent, and enjoy the batshit insanity thereof) bears the wonderfully Pythonesque title of, wait for it:

Theozoology, or the Account of the Sodomite Apelings and the Divine Electron

Oh, incidentally, this was the individual whose writings helped to propel Hitler on the path leading to the Holocaust.

Liebenfels asserted that the only path that would lead to (surprise, surprise) blond Aryans regaining their rightful status as “electric supermen”, was ruthless cultivation of “racial purity” (translation: lots of inbreeding). We all saw what that did to the Habsburgs. He had an inventive streak when it came to racial insults aimed at those outside the Aryan pale, referring to purportedly “inferior” races as “castrated Chandalas” and “beastmen”.

I suspect Dr Sanden’s bizarre contraption pre-dates Liebenfels by a good decade or more, it looks like the sort of quasi-steampunk gadget that would have been doing the rounds of various odd catalogues in the 1880s or early 1890s, unless of course you have a date for the advert that reveals otherwise.

Though it didn’t take long after the discovery of electricity, for assorted humans to figure out ways of introducing it into kinky sex - look up “violet wands” for possibly the canonical example.

1 Like
172

Wow, catchy title, I wonder how many months that was on the bestsellers list for.

Even reading the title is making me a little queasy, if I’m honest.

173

The work in question includes a nice little hand-drawn bestiary of assorted “apelings” and “beastmen” at the rear, that on its own provides much hilarity, in the best tradition of mediaeval fantasising.

Liebenfels had quite a vivid imagination, reworking the Crucifixion to include Jesus being rogered in the chocolate starfish by a horde of “apelings”. If you can stomach the contents of this excursion into positively meningococcal cognition, and navigate the waters of what is, at times, a freakishly Chthulic mental ocean without damage to your psyche, it reads as though Michael Palin and Graham Chapman enjoyed some communing via ouija board with the soul of H. P. Lovecraft, and tried to produce a script from the occasion.

Were it not from the fallout arising from Hitler’s absorption of Liebenfels’ various scribblings, this book would be a truly rarefied species of surreal humour, the literary version of one of those bizarre Ediacaran bauplans. Parts of it are tentacle porn without the tentacles, and this man’s obsession with the idea that sexual intercourse is an act of depravity, is of course hideously pathological.

But if you can step aside from the enormities arising from this voyage to the land of wilful encephalitis, instead treating it as if the Dadaists had decided to feed Greek comedy into a blender, then lace it with a heavy spicing of völkisch dick swinging, and stir in a dash of Hieronymus Bosch, then some idea of the resulting concoction wafts its aroma under your nose. With reference to a spoof advertisement series that appeared here on UK TV in the 1990s, the culinary equivalent would be chocolate strawberry cheesy peas, with added kimchi and a hint of deadly nightshade.

Yes, it’s that far out on the ragged edges of altered cognition. Approach with care.

2 Likes
174

Credit where credit is due, I laughed out loud several times there, kudos to you sir.

Brilliant… :grin:

175

Thank you for visiting and for offering help.
Whilst I do not doubt your motives, may I say that your claim to be able provide answers to big questions smacks of conceit. There is absolutely no convincing evidence for the existence of God. Every established religion on earth accepts this. That is why believers are expected to accept the religion’s teaching on the basis of faith, i.e, belief without evidence. That being so, your claim to have answers suggests that you have access to information no-one else possesses.

All that aside, atheists refuse to believe in God or gods without evidence. We are not, therefore, “contemplating the existence of God”. In that, we are at least honest. Believers in God are dishonest because they promote belief as fact, albeit their dishonesty often stems from a lack of understanding and a sincere and strongly held belief, rather than for any wrong intent.

Like many here, I’m sure, I am very happy to discuss/debate with you but you must understand that you will be called not to offer help but to justify your assertions.

1 Like
176

@David_Killens
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10219700386325804&id=1401962960&ref=bookmarks

In case you were wondering how things are going for my sweet friend.
Thank you for caring about her. I really do appreciate it.

177

FYI - people that don’t pray, or pray to other gods get the same results if they choose.

Good to see her family caring for her. And a lesson learned. Don’t fuck with the tax man.

178

@Whitefire13
She doesn’t owe them anything legally, but the court stuff is too much. They should have never charged her for the taxes that she owed.
It would just take more time than she wants to spend battling. She’s 90 and tired of War zones.
She had a case that she could win…she is just choosing not to.
I am proud of her. Walking away from the only thing you’ve known for 43 years would be hard.
She’s tough, but maybe something like this had to happen for her to let go.
I appreciate you taking the time to say that you care too.

179

Alrighty then.

I’m pretty sure you believe in free will.

Your god is omnipotent and omnibenevolent. Because he is omnipotent he has to be omniscient and omnipresent, otherwise he couldnt be omnipotent.

If god had all these attributes, we would live in a perfect universe. We don’t.

For a moment, let’s ignore that. If god is omniscient, you cannot have free will. Then the notion of hell is just plain evil. Like I said, he requires omniscience to be omnipotent. So if he’s not omniscient you may have free will and hell isnt such an evil idea (ignoring the fact that you receive an infinite punishment for a finite crime) but he cannot be omnipotent so why call him god? If he is omniscient however he is malevolent.

Now back to the matter at hand, the imperfect universe. Zooming in on earth. Suffering exists. Birth defects, natural disasters, murdering creatures, etc. If god was omnibenevolent he would hate this. If he was omnipotent he would stop this from happening. The suffering lingers on. Either he is not omnipotent or not omnibenevolent or both.

Put simply the god you believe in cant exist.

I’d like you to please explain why we should even consider his existence.

1 Like
180

I think Epicurus summed it nicely, and centuries before Jesus is alleged to have uttered a word.

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

2 Likes
181

THEREFORE a free will is an impossibility.

God created you the way you are. He knows every decision you are going to make before you make it because he made you that way. He is either omniscient and knows everything, or he is not. If he knows everything and is omnipotent, how does he stand by and allow rapes, murders, disease and worse to continue. He can not be ‘responding to these things’ as they are all a part of his plan. Free will, contradicts an all knowing and all powerful god. You can not act outside of the exact way god created you to act. He knows what you will do before you do it. You can do nothing outside of his plan for you. Or is he also not omnipotent?

1 Like
182

Yes!

Raised this question when I was about 16 at the catholic school I attended. Something like; “god is omniscient, he knows everything we do or will do. Doesn’t that negate free will?” Answer ‘’ Knowing something will happen doesn’t make it happen" That was one step up from the usual response of “That’s a mystery of faith, we just believe it” (no, really)

Free will has been a contentious issue within Christendom over the centuries. The Calvinists taught the doctrine of predestination, admitting there is no free will. That left a problem. How then could one tell if another was saved or damned? With the brilliance of simplicity, the Calvinists decided that god would only give his largess to the saved. IE the rich and successful. Obviously, those bereft of largess, such as the poor, were pre damned ,and could be simply ignored.

((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((9))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

"The theological doctrine of divine foreknowledge is often alleged to be in conflict with free will, particularly in Calvinistic circles: if God knows exactly what will happen (right down to every choice a person makes), it would seem that the “freedom” of these choices is called into question.[1]

This problem relates to Aristotle’s analysis of the problem of the sea battle: tomorrow either there will or will not be a sea battle. According to the Law of excluded middle, there seem to be two options. If there will be a sea battle, then it seems that it was true even yesterday that there would be one. Thus it is necessary that the sea battle will occur. If there will not be one, then, by similar reasoning, it is necessary that it will not occur.[2] That means that the future, whatever it is, is completely fixed by past truths: true propositions about the future (a deterministic conclusion is reached: things could not have been any other way)."

Free will in theology - Wikipedia.

So where does that leave me? I have no problem with notions of genetic and psychological determinism. I think free will is largely an illusion, but don’t know exactly where to draw the line.

No problem day to day: I feel as if I have free will, so don’t worry about it. I also have a problem with what I see as the unavoidable conclusion that no free will means no personal responsibility. I doubt I will ever be intellectually satisfied about the question.

184

Post removed because of spamming.