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Miller's ChristianThinkTank


mymistake

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I'm just going to take a stab at the top of the list of Christian Think Tank's common objections.  Under nature is cruel there are five questions and the response to the first question is:

http://christianthinktank.com/pred1.html

 

For starters he is assuming God, assuming a young universe, assuming the "fall from grace", assuming that nature changed after the fall, assuming that there was a world wide flood, assuming that nature changed after the flood . . . when all of these assumptions have no foundation.  In other words they are just as reliable as the idea that Goldilocks and the three bears was a true story or that the next Nigerian minister who e-mails you really does want to split 30 million with you. 

 

 

From the article:

http://christianthinktank.com/pred1.html

"We would have to conclude that a very basic (low-carnivory, low dietary restrictions, "CNS non-violent") food-chain was created by God, but that the eco-dynamics of the system were substantially modified at/after the Fall and the Flood. Nevertheless, the modifications allowed to be introduced were calculated, designed, and are regulated in order to preserve bio-diversity and life on the earth, and still achieve overall "more good than bad" in the system. Thus the predator-prey relationships (broadly considered) that we see today will have more elements that are "positive" (e.g., defensive modifications, poisons that eliminate feeling/pain as they kill, underdeveloped nervous systems of the largest number of prey) than elements that are "negative" (e.g., violent death involving actual suffering for long periods of time in higher mammals). We are also told that God is only 'tolerating' and 'regulating' this situation at the present, and that His purpose in history of rich bio-diversity, in community balance, in loving affirmation, and in the harmony of peace and companionship will eventually be achieved. And then the "lion will lay down with the lamb." "

 

This is nonsense.  It is objective fact that animals (and people when not protected by technology) suffered greatly at the hands of nature.  Dying is almost always painful.  Whether an organism dies of thirst, starvation, the elements, gets ripped to shreds by a predator, or slowly devoured from the inside by tiny microbes, it is all pointless suffering.  A God who designed it could not be good.  A good God who allowed it to happen through to a loop-hole or adjustment and didn't correct it cannot be all knowing.  This breaks the Christian concept of God and proves Christianity is false.

 

 

I'm not going to waste time on every point he brings up but I will highlight a few examples of the ridiculousness of his points:

"Genesis 3-4 indicates that animal death was at least "allowable" to God, since He would have killed some animal to produce the "skins" for Adam and Eve (3.21)"

 

This is religion, not science.

 

"6. Somewhere in the Messianic Future, the ecosystem will return to the basic original blueprint of peaceful harmony and generalized herbivory (or a comparable plan)."

 

So people are all going to become vegetarians?  So will lions, tigers, snakes, spiders . . . because the Bible says?

 

Yeah, that isn't going to happen.

 

 

Use of the word "might":  7 times

. . . so--they might have eaten insects . . . 

. . . and this situation might have existed back then . . .

. . . since it might have introduced competition . . . 

God might have modified . . . 

Also, there might also have been . . . 

"Theologically, we might note three other points:"        (Note this particular usage is a legitimate figure of speech rather than speculation.)

. . . was a result of the Fall, it is not a certain as some might believe.

 

 

So six of the seven were speculation.  Why didn't God make himself look more solid that all thousands of false gods and goddesses that won't save our souls?

 

 

 

 

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I think you're spot on. Trying to shoehorn that loving Christian God into what we know as REALITY is, at the very least a daunting task. I have sympathy and some admiration for those who try anyway as they tirelessly defend their faith. 

 

Regarding this apparently random, dog eat dog world we live in, I must say the Hindu philosophy makes much more sense, though there is really no evidence that that is true either. It just seems a much more reasonable explanation for why things are the way they are and why we might want to keep going on anyway. In case some are unfamiliar with Hindu mythology, and Buddhism by extension to a great degree, the premise is that everything there is is an expression of everything there is. The whole shebang. We are god more or less hiding from myself and playing a great game to relieve boredom. Watts likens it to the war going on within our own bodies; these cells and those bacteria and other microorganisms are in constant battle to the death from their perspectives. However, that struggle and destruction is very good indeed from our perspective as it's what keeps us alive. It's a matter of Big Picture perspective, and we are as big as the picture gets if we are All That Is, God or Brahman. We are here precisely to play the game, and those who realize it are "enlightened" or of the Buddha nature, though most continue to play the game anyway. The difference is knowing that everything is as it is for good reason, there are no mistakes and it all works out in the end. Now, if you're going to get all spiritual and shit, doesn't that make more sense?

 

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http://christianthinktank.com/pred2.html

 

"...does the savagery of predation in nature show that God either isn't, or at least isn't good-hearted?"

 

(further down)

Question Two: How extensive is 'painful predation'? (In other words, DO all things live only at the expense of agonizing death by those lower on the food chain?) 

 

 

 

Immediately he goes to the strategy of casting doubt on the idea that other organisms can feel agony.  This is a dead end.  If you are cruel to most organisms they will act as if they are experiencing pain.  Just watch a pet shelter advertisement on TV.  Animals do feel pain.  Pain is a very basic experience that evolved early and it was useful for keeping organisms alive so almost all of the successful organisms passed on pain experience and even developed it into even more useful functions.  It's perfectly explained by evolution but a huge problem for an all loving, all knowing, all powerful wizard.

 

He uses the example of having tissue removed from his arm as evidence that:

"Three, from the above situation we can also infer that cell damage or destruction (and possibly even death itself) is not an adequate criterion for experiencing agony. "

 

Uh, no.  Going to the doctor to have a procedure done is not the same as the suffering that animals (and people without technology) experience in survival conditions.

 

 

He then goes on to assume if it doesn't have a brain or nervous system then it can't experience agony.  But in the microscope we can watch microbes battle and something must be telling them when they are in danger.  I don't think it is safe to assume that.  It strikes me as a big leap.  But even if he is right and can eliminate the vast majority of organisms there are still billions of organisms that have brains, nervous systems and die agonizing deaths.  Some of them are even human beings.  We have children who die every day and all the apologists can do is say "God called them home".  That doesn't explain why a parent has to watch their child die.  However it does prove the Christian God is false.

 

 

Next he tries to play that you have to have consciousness in order to experience agony.  I think he went that way because proving animals have consciousness it a tough nut to crack with a steep burden of proof.  But we only have to look at animal behavior to see that animals do act like they experience agony when they are in a situation that should cause agony.  When an animal catches on fire it screams.  It's not rocket science to draw the obvious conclusion.

 

But in the end he can't rule out that some animals do experience agony.  Instead of blaming God for this cruelty he tries to distract from it.

 

"Now, I am not going to try to decide this issue here; for my argument I can agree that mammals can experience stress and suffering. But I also want to point out that IF they can experience suffering, THEN they also can experience pleasure during their lives." 

 

and further down:

 

"3. This gives us only 14.6k species (out of 1.55M) that could experience 'agony' at all...a whopping 0.94%...(and consciousness would likely be on a spectrum, with primates being 'high' and birds being 'low')

So, the first issue of the 'all things live at the expense of an agonizing death of another' is clearly false..."

 

Okay even if most living things are not smart enough or equipped to feel pain that doesn't negate God's responsibility for the billions of high functioning animals and also the people who do suffer.

 

 

 Use of the word "might":  17 times

 

I'm not going to quote all 17.  Some are found in the articles he quotes.  A few are legitimate use of a figure of speech.  However his defense of God is still highly speculative.

 

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I am curious to know what general principle Miller is getting at regarding the more positive than negative. What is this supposed to state about the character of God here?

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10 hours ago, TinMan said:

I am curious to know what general principle Miller is getting at regarding the more positive than negative. What is this supposed to state about the character of God here?

 

 

God is never a bad guy.  God is the good guy so there must be a deeper meaning that eludes human understanding.

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Wow! That is actually vaguely entertaining, while also being absolutely ridiculous. Amazing!

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@ShotoManhattan

These apologetic's are quite bad. 

 

The thing to do is not let them get past Genesis 1:1 without dealing with the problem. Technically, even with respect to BBT and all of that, there is NO fixed beginning in which to point to. There's always the issue of something pre-existing what ever beginning we choose to state. There's an entire thread about this problem in the science section. Through both physics and philosophy, this is a real problem for any one trying to assert a fixed, or absolute beginning. 

 

"In the beginning..."

 

Red flag! Do not proceed without settling the initial claim. 

 

"...God created the heavens and the earth" (Elohim means, "Gods", YHWH is one of the "Gods") 

 

Assumption #1 is a fixed beginning for the universe, apparently with only the earth existing within the universe. Assumption #2 is the existence of these "Elohim" gods. These are two red flags from the outset. There's a rich history of archaeology and textual criticism that explains who and what the "Gods" of Genesis were. By way of straight forward evidence. These two assumptions fail miserably upon inspection. And it keeps going like this right on through. One false claim after the next, evidently false claims which can be detailed as to how wrong they each are and why. And it's obvious that this is symbolic mythology, not literal history and not factual statements about reality, the universe nor life on earth. 

 

You have to establish these points with the apologist and then put their apologetic's into perspective thereafter. 

 

All of this nonsense about vegetarian life turning to predatory life is seen as reading mythology as if it were referring to literal truth, literal history, when it clearly is not. And you can keep referring to the very non literal nature of the creation account to affirm that as needed. Evenings and mornings go by before the creation of the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day. A beginning which can't be literal, a group of Gods who are no different than the Greek and Roman pantheons, evenings and mornings before the sun, waters above and below the earth, grass growing on dry land one day before the sun is created, for the purpose of marking "days," and times. And human beings created at the tail end of this clearly non-literal creation myth. 

 

So none of it will ever make any sense, by any stretch of the imagination. It can't make sense, because it's not written according to real history, real reproduction and genetics, real cosmology, or real anything for that matter. 

 

It isn't real.

 

Therefore it completely folds under close inspection, which we should expect from something that isn't real to begin with. 

 

This is why apologist's can never win, can never get to high ground. 

 

They are necessarily building up houses from a sand (fictitious) foundation. Anyone who can see the sand foundation can toss water on it and pwn these apologist's, tumbling down their houses of apologies. The only way out for these apologist's is the same way out of dred locks - you gotta cut'em off, bwoy! Start anew! 

 

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 16/03/2018 at 1:00 AM, mymistake said:

I'm just going to take a stab at the top of the list of Christian Think Tank's common objections.  Under nature is cruel there are five questions and the response to the first question is:

http://christianthinktank.com/pred1.html

 

For starters he is assuming God, assuming a young universe, assuming the "fall from grace", assuming that nature changed after the fall, assuming that there was a world wide flood, assuming that nature changed after the flood . . . when all of these assumptions have no foundation.  In other words they are just as reliable as the idea that Goldilocks and the three bears was a true story or that the next Nigerian minister who e-mails you really does want to split 30 million with you. 

 

 

From the article:

http://christianthinktank.com/pred1.html

"We would have to conclude that a very basic (low-carnivory, low dietary restrictions, "CNS non-violent") food-chain was created by God, but that the eco-dynamics of the system were substantially modified at/after the Fall and the Flood. Nevertheless, the modifications allowed to be introduced were calculated, designed, and are regulated in order to preserve bio-diversity and life on the earth, and still achieve overall "more good than bad" in the system. Thus the predator-prey relationships (broadly considered) that we see today will have more elements that are "positive" (e.g., defensive modifications, poisons that eliminate feeling/pain as they kill, underdeveloped nervous systems of the largest number of prey) than elements that are "negative" (e.g., violent death involving actual suffering for long periods of time in higher mammals). We are also told that God is only 'tolerating' and 'regulating' this situation at the present, and that His purpose in history of rich bio-diversity, in community balance, in loving affirmation, and in the harmony of peace and companionship will eventually be achieved. And then the "lion will lay down with the lamb." "

 

This is nonsense.  It is objective fact that animals (and people when not protected by technology) suffered greatly at the hands of nature.  Dying is almost always painful.  Whether an organism dies of thirst, starvation, the elements, gets ripped to shreds by a predator, or slowly devoured from the inside by tiny microbes, it is all pointless suffering.  A God who designed it could not be good.  A good God who allowed it to happen through to a loop-hole or adjustment and didn't correct it cannot be all knowing.  This breaks the Christian concept of God and proves Christianity is false.

 

 

I'm not going to waste time on every point he brings up but I will highlight a few examples of the ridiculousness of his points:

"Genesis 3-4 indicates that animal death was at least "allowable" to God, since He would have killed some animal to produce the "skins" for Adam and Eve (3.21)"

 

This is religion, not science.

 

"6. Somewhere in the Messianic Future, the ecosystem will return to the basic original blueprint of peaceful harmony and generalized herbivory (or a comparable plan)."

 

So people are all going to become vegetarians?  So will lions, tigers, snakes, spiders . . . because the Bible says?

 

Yeah, that isn't going to happen.

 

 

Use of the word "might":  7 times

. . . so--they might have eaten insects . . . 

. . . and this situation might have existed back then . . .

. . . since it might have introduced competition . . . 

God might have modified . . . 

Also, there might also have been . . . 

"Theologically, we might note three other points:"        (Note this particular usage is a legitimate figure of speech rather than speculation.)

. . . was a result of the Fall, it is not a certain as some might believe.

 

 

So six of the seven were speculation.  Why didn't God make himself look more solid that all thousands of false gods and goddesses that won't save our souls?

 

 

 

 

 

You know when Christians believe in a LOVING god they believe the same God is also just, wise, wonderful counsellor and so on... They believe he is an all-consuming fire , even though he is LOVE (heard a pastor say that this is in the Bible).

 

They compare him to a parent who should be loving and strict to his kids for their own good.

 

Yeah, these are the people who believe that god shut the lion's mouths for his Daniel or David.. Can't remember who it was for exactly... 

 

When I was a child I asked my mum a doubt about God and she said we do not have the right to investigate things that are beyond what is given in the Bible. 

 

Lol, I don't know if any of what i wrote answers your original post, but replied according to my understanding. 

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