Gandalf Grey wrote:

IS THERE A GOD? NO.
Strong Atheism's answer.
Part 1.

1. First of all, this proof "God" does not exist
is aimed at an entire class of gods, not particular
gods.

This remark alone is an explict admission that you've been lying up to
this point.

No, its just an admission I underestimated the intelligence
of SOME of my audience.

This is the class of gods that are
omni-everything and creator of all. If I can
disprove an entire class of gods, all particular gods
that belong to that class are collectively disproven
too. This is an efficient, and sensible approach to
disproving god, by which I mean the god of major
religious and theological traditions.

No, it is not. Since your argument aims at attributes of God, not at the
existence of god per se. The god of the major traditions might still
exist apart from the attributes the theologians have ascribed to that
god.

1. Tom is a doctor.
2. Tom has never been to college and is illiterate
3. Since doctors are literate and have to attend college, Tom
is obviously not a doctor as claimed.

What I do is point out that the class of omni-everything gods
similarly contains claims that disprove each other.

Naturally, all claim specific examples of that class likewise
are impossible.

You reek of stupidity and intellectual incapability.

1. Bill Smith exists.
2. It is said by his admirers that Bill Smith always tells the truth.
3. But Bill Smith cannot always tell the truth.
4. Hence Bills Smith does not exist?????

That is just dumb. Just pathetic.

strawman.

on the net this month.

A class of gods is said to be omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient and
creator of all.

1. Bill Smith exists.
2. It is said by his admirers that Bill Smith always tells the truth.
3. But Bill Smith cannot always tell the truth.
4. Hence Bills Smith does not exist?????

If god creates all, and is omniscient, he knows what his creations will do
in the future. Any possible god must then examine each potential act and
all it to come to pass or something else to be substituted. he and olny
he creates or decides what is created.

Free will cannot exist for man. Man can decide exactly nothing at all.

Thus all evil is god's doing, personally and knowingly, all evils from
greatest to smallest.

Evil =/= omnibenevolent as explicitly claimed.

All gods that are said to be omniscient and creator of all are thus
contradictory

Omnibenevolent implies good and evil exist, do I have to make THAT
explicit
too, for the jerk squad? I think I shall just in case.

Omnipotence. Omnipotence mean all powerful. That means not
affected by other forces or powers. Time is does not affect god.

God is outside and transcedent to time.

Time does not affect god so
theer is thus no past, present, future. To god all is now.
Thus god created all at once in all its particulars to the smallest
physical
degree.

Thus again, there is no free will and all evil acts are thus god's
doing.

Thus the class of all gods that are said to be omnipotent, are thus
transcedent to time, not bound by time, and thus free will cannot exist
mthus evil is all god's doing.

All gods of the class of god that are omnipotent are thus all evil.

And "Bob's" yer uncle.

Thus the concept of a class of creators gods that are
omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent is impossible.

And last but not least, little Gandalf flailing his arms futility as he
trails smoke and fire into the eternal pit of bad ideas and lack
of reasoning ability.

An obvious absurdity.

And so your argument fails. The fact that God cannot logically be
omnipotent in the extreme sense that the Christian tradition insists,
does
not in itself prove that God does not exist.

It does show the god that is indeed dogmatically claimed to be omnipotent
cannot exist.
Obviously.

"Extreme sense" is your strawman.

For example Aquinas states god is only omnipotent in regards to real
thhings, not say bad definitiions like "unmarried batchelors".
I don't have to pick a strawman extreme omnipotence to do the job.

Judaism,
Christianity, Islam, Brahamnistic Hinduism.
Some have complained that this does not disprove all
gods. True, but this is not meant to, it is meant
only to deal with the gods that are the main problem
for this world,

Another unsupported assertion. Nowhere does your original argument prove
this universal claim. Religion in general has caused tremendous
suffering
in the world, but your argument nowhere addresses this particular
problem.

Supported. You are being irrational here.

the gods of 4 1/2 billion believers.
The god that is the source of fundamentalism,
bigotry, fanaticism, anti-intellectualism and
backwardness. There are a few other classes of gods
but numerically by believers, these are not that
widespread or important.

According to whom? You may be competent to recognize what is
'widespread'
but who are you to decide what is "important?"

According to all with brains.

for example, without religious idiots in the US would we be having
problems with creationists assaulting science teaching in schools, and in
may cases, all but gutting science education in backard states and cities?

You are a fool. and wrong.

But it is possible to sort
them into a few classes of gods and likewise disprove
each class.

Which you have not done and cannot do. Hence, another lie on your part.

Which I do, stop lying, it makes the peanut gallery laugh at your
pretensions.

Here I am primarily looking at the class
of omni-everything creator gods. This does not mean
other classes of gods cannot also be likewise disproven.

And it doesn't mean they can be.

You lame and wrong opinion.
as if you know zip about it.

Or are totally unimportant. But basically the
omni-everything class of gods is so far above any
other god that once it is debunked, its hard to
step down to distinctly second rate gods.

Why is this so and why should it be so? 100s of years ago, the vast bulk
of
humanity believed that space was filled with an ether. Did this make the
fact that it was not filled with ether "unimportant?"

Non sequitur.

Its like
stepping down from a Cadillac to a bicycle.

Why? You're making a value judgement about something that you're
attempting
to prove or disprove. Hence, you're committing the naturalistic fallacy.

Fallacy.

2. A BASIC DEFINITION THE CLASS OF GOD,
OMNI-EVERYTHING AND CREATOR OF ALL
Also known here as the Grand God of Grand Theology.

There is no evidence whatsover for god. All we
have to work from is claims, or assertions made
about god. I have chosen the following 8 as they are
all part of all great and large religions and
theological traditions of the world.

But mostly because you've decided that they are the weakest factors. In
other words, you still haven't attacked the assertion of God's existence,
only assertions concerning God's attributes.

I need only weak factors to work with and basically all basic claims of
this
class of god are indeed, weak,
Sorry, thems just the facts. All we have are weak assertions.

I mean, what facts are there that save omnipotence, omnibenevolnece
and omniscience, free will and this class of gods.
Nothing. Nothing at all.

Most of 4 1/2
billion believers will agree with most of these,
and these are all dogmatic to most main religions.

Fallacy of composition. Not even all Christians agree with these points.

Most...

We will fid a few wimpy newage type salad bar christians and so on.
But conservatives, evangelicals, fundies and moslems mostly agree god is
omni-everything. Sorry.

If we can show these create contradictions, we can show that
the class omni-everything creator gods, the Grand God,
cannot exist.

No, you cannot. All you can prove is that any particular attribute is
illogical within that particular argument.

We can. You simply are wrong. As usual.

All we have to work with are assertions
and logic.

Get on with it, Barlow.

Read faster.

The general overarching definition of god as per
the major religions of the world is:

A. God is personal, God has will and consciousness.
B. God has free will.
C. God is the creator of all.
D. God is omnipotent.
E. God is omnibenevolent.
F. God is omniscient.
G. God is that which nothing more powerful
can be imagined.

These are the basic attributes that can be claimed
for the god of orthodox Judaism, Christianity,
Islam, and Hinduism.

1. you're utterly wrong about the beliefs that form Hinduism and
obviously
have no idea what the hell you're talking about.

I do, you do not.

2. Judaism is NOT Christianity, and you're attributing to the one what is
strictly true only of the other.

I didn't say it was, did I?.

These are the basic attributes that can be claimed
for the god of orthodox Judaism, Christianity,
Islam, and Hinduism.

You lied again.,

These are the basic attributes that can be claimed
for the god of orthodox Judaism, Christianity,
Islam, and Hinduism.

Strawman, reading comprehension problem, basic inability to read and
understand simple english sentence written at a 6th grade level for your
reading pleasure.

3. The same can be said for Islam.

Omnibenevolence and omniscience are actually
logically derivable from the claimed attribute of
omnipotence and so aren't not truly independent
attributes, and may be considered special aspects
of omnipotence.

No they aren't and you can't prove that they are. There is no logical
reason that a being could not be omnibenevolent without being omnipotent.
The same is true of omniscience. Neither knowledge nor goodness are
power, hence neither omnibenevolence nor omniscience are Omnipotence.

Sighhhhhhhhhh. Omnipotence means all powerful. Including logically,
omniscience, and the power of being morally perfect and more.

Simply wrong. You are not logical nor thinking.

Since being evil is by all accounts of theology a defect, god cannot have
defects because then he is not all powerful.

This is old dogma.

We're beginning to see that your argument is as fallacious in its details
as it was in its major presumption.

We see you are still wrong about everything

3. We can abstract a class of gods, omni-everything,
creator gods from these 8 characteristics.

Except that you haven't proved the 8 characteristics at this point.

You are obviously a goofball.
1. God is personal, god has conciousness and will
2. God is intelligent
3. God has free will
4. God created all
5. God is omnipotent
6. God is omniscient
7. God is omnibenevolent
8. God is that which is so great, nothing greater
can be imagined.

All are dogmatic among these basic religious traditions.

1. Bill Smith exists.
2. It is said by his admirers that Bill Smith always tells the truth.
3. But Bill Smith cannot always tell the truth.
4. Hence Bills Smith does not exist?????

5. CLASSES OF GODS

It is important to note here in 2. that this is a
definition not for a particular god, but an
entire class of gods. This is key to this disproof
which is general in nature.

Except that your list is both incomplete and internally illogical as I've
shown.

6. If we disprove the entire class of gods by examining
the logical implications of a few claims, all secondary
claims are also destroyed.

1. That's not necessarily true.
2. You haven't disproved the entire class.

we are about t get there, stop squawking and keep reding.

We need not examine claims of god's simplicity or whether
god is immanent or transcendent or other similar claims.

Which you can't begin to do.

I could, its for another time.

Classes of transcedent or immanent gods go away when
they are claimed to be of class of omni-everything anyway.
Other problems go away automatically, following them in flames
the hole of bad ideas.

Siggghhhhhhhh. This isn't going anywhere, is it?
Waste of my time to see you failing to think.

We need not break down omnibenevolence into secondary
associated claims such as such as mercy, justice, or
implied claims, though we might mention their destruction
in passing when appropriate, and damage done to such
concepts of damnation, or punishment or sin.

Such destruction as you have NOT caused, due to the flaws mentioned
above.

7. If we disprove a class of gods,

But so far you haven't.

9. THE FOUR GREAT THEOLOGICAL TRADITIONS

Again, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism hold
to this basic Grand God and are typical Grand
Theologies holding to this basic class of god as
their basic definitions of what god is at god's
most basic level.

But I've shown that they do not hold to the god you've constructed, nor
are they equivalent to each other.

I chose these since the majority of
believers 4 1/2 billion approximately belong to these
traditions and related religions and sects.

Fallacy of *argumentum ad numeran* It makes no difference how many
people
believe what. A proof is supposed to address truth, not popular opinion.
At this point, you've failed to even accurately describe what the major
beliefs believe in. You're certainly in no position to make statements
about the importance of those beliefs taken as an illigitimate group.

10. THE PROBLEM OF EVIL.

The problem of evil was first written down by
Epicurus in about the third century BCE.
It is found in Christian writer Lactantius's
Treatise on the Anger of God.

A basic formulation is:
A. God is defined as powerful
B. God is defined as as good.
C. Evil exists.
D. God therefore, is not powerful as claimed.
E. Or God is not good as claimed.
F. Or god is neither powerful or
good.
G. Or god is not existant.

Not a true representation of the argument. The argument does not prove
that
god does not exist UNLESS god must be powerful and good as asserted. And
even then, even assuming that god must be either good or powerful, god
might
not be the one and still be the other. Therefore the argument from evil,
which reaches its most powerful form much later than the pre-socratics
that
you seem to be limited to, does not prove the non-existence of god. It
only
proves that god cannot be both ALL-powerful and all good. If god were
simply powerful, god might not be powerful enough to eliminate evil. The
true argument claims that god is omnipotent, that god could unilaterally
prevent the occurance of evil in the world if god wanted to. The further
assumption that god must be infinitely good creates a god that MUST want
to create a world in which no actual evil exists.

Hence, the original form of the argument does not prove a thing. The
final form of the argument only proves that IF a god MUST be, by
definition BOTH infinitely good and infinitely powerful, then such a god
is a logical contradiction.

[argument from free will clipped since it derives from your fallacious
presentation of the argument from evil]

13 OMNISCIENCE VERSUS CREATORHOOD OF GOD
FREE WILL DISPROVEN PART 2.

God is defined as creator of all in these
religions.
And god is claimed to be omniscient, all knowing.

Not in all of the religions you've named. Thus your argument fails right
here.

A. God created the Universe and all in it.
B. God is omniscient, all knowing, he knows all
in the Universe and he knows the future of the
Universe and its contents.

In some traditions.

C. If god creates a Universe, he will know that
in 13 billion years this Universe will have a
man named John Smith in it.

This is not omniscience vs. creatorhood. There is no necessary reason
that a creator logically must also know the full details of all possible
futures.

D. If John Smith is good and saved, or evil and
damned, God will know that.
E. As he knows that the Universe in its present
state will have a John Smith, god may then
contemplate the future state of Smith and
decide if he will tolerate an evil Smith.
F. If yes, Smith will be evil only because of a
specific personal and will choice made solely
by god.
G. If Smith is evil, then evil exists solely
because of a choice made by god. In fact all
moral evil done by creations of god will be
evil and do evil only because of personal and
willful creations of god allowing evil acts
to be done, by direct decision of god.
H. If evil exists in a world with an omniscient
creator god, it is solely and only because
god allows evil.

Non sequitur. An omniscient god that is not omnipotent might not have a
choice as to whether to allow evil or not.

I. If evil exists solely because of personal
choices of god, god then is not as defined,
omnibenevolent.

Non sequitur. You haven't proved that evil necessarily exists due to
god's
choice. If god is not omnipotent, evil may exist regardless.

J. Man and any other sentient being in such a
Universe cannot have any free will, not even
in principle. A Universe with a god that
creates all and knows all precludes free will
for all beings god creates in the strongest
possible manner.

Non sequitur. Mere knowledge does not imply control. God might know
everything that is knowable and still not know the future, or god might
know everything including all possible futures [though I doubt it].
Nevertheless, the fact that god knows everything does not logically imply
that God denies free will to actors in the world. In a purely
deterministic universe, which is a scientific materialistic assumption,
there is also no
such thing as true 'free will'. What does god's foreknowledge of such a
universe have to do with the actual precluding of free will? Simply
knowing that the universe is predetermined is to know that there can be
no
such thing as true free will, but knowing and causing are two different
things. Your argument implies that if a scientist believes that the
universe is deterministic and the scientist is right, then the scientist
is responsible
for destroying free will. That's an absurdity.

The Grand God of Grand
Theology is thus self destroying,

Not from what you've shown.

THE SITUATION SO FAR.

1. A minimalistic class of gods is defined, this
Grand God has been defined here with as few
terms as possible.

Actually, you've been as wordy as you can be in order to cover the
numerous logical flaws in your argument.

2. The problem of evil dooms such a claimed god.

As I've shown, it does not.

3. The attempted defense, free will is fatally
flawed.

As I've shown, free will or its absence need have nothing to do with god
one way or another.

4. Omniscience and creatorhood of god further
doom claims of god's omnibenevolence

No they don't, as I've shown. In fact, as I've shown, they have nothing
to do with one another.

man's free will free will cannot exist for
man.

If this is true, it need have nothing to do with god.

All evil is the direct and knowing
creation of god contradicting claims of
omnibenevolence.

You haven't even begun to show that. You haven't even addressed it.
Hence, I can only presume that you've pulled that claim out of thin air.

5. Since Free will for man is totally impossible,
free will cannot be a good quality, much less
necessary.

Again, you havne't demonstrated that.

14. GOD AND TIME.

Both Augustine and Boethius described god as being
transcendent to time, outside and beyond it.
Thus there is no past, present, or future to god,
all is now. Since all is now, god must have
create all things at once at once.

Again, you're conflating terms. Here you conflate timelessness and
creation when you haven't proved that both must be necessary attributes
of
a god.

Any explicit claims of omniscience, and creatorship of god
doom free will and more. Any claim god is outside of time
forces us to the claim god is effectively omniscient.

1. you haven't doomed free will.
2. Being outside of time is not a necessary corollary much less a cause
of
omniscience.

15. If evil exists, god is evil.

Another assertion out of left field. Please show your proof of this
assertion. You've not even addressed this question to this point.

We have no free will which
means secondary attributes of God such as mercy, love, justice
are pretty meaningless in face of a god that creates many
of us morally evil.

If such a god existed, that might be true. But you offer no evidence to
suggest that god must have had a choice in the fine details of creation.
I.e., you haven't offered proof that god must be omnipotent. Hence, your
derived assumptions that he must not be merciful, loving or just, are
what
is truly meaningless here.

Heaven, hell, damnation, sin, punishment,
salvation, nothing much makes with such an omniscient god.

How so? How does Omniscience imply any of the above?

Augustine's free will defense of God in face of Epicurus's
problem of evil is utterly undone by his claim god is sovereign
over time because he is all powerful.

You haven't shown this to be the case.

16. TIME AND GOD'S CREATION OF ALL.
If we say god is omnipotent, all powerful, he is outside
of time and free will is impossible and all else is simply an
Universe utterly alien, incoherent and mad and most certainly
not anything the great theological traditions tell it it is.

That does not follow. The fact that Augustine said that god is all
powerful and outside of time, does not mean that god is either all
powerful or outside of time, OR that either of these attributes are
necessary attributes
of god. Omnipotence does not imply being outside of time. Being outside
of time does not imply omnipotence.

And if to avoid this we say god is not outside of time, this
implies time is outside and beyond god and he cannot have
created it. Thus contradicting claims of being the creator of
all. Especially ex nihilo as many religions claim.

Not all religions make a ex nihilo claim.

17. Here, the Grand God of Grand Theology has
collapsed.

Apparently not, since you haven't made an argument that would lead to
such
a collapse.

As has Grand Theology.

1. Only the Grand Theology that you deliberately made up out of a
patchwork, skewed selection of elements would be impacted by even that
small part of your lengthy argument that was actually valid.

2. Since no such theology exists save in your skewed list, it cannot be
said that you've said much of anything about the major tenets of Western
Theology.

3. Your argument seems to be an argument about what you think is most
popular in most of theology.

4. Since what you think is most popular is not even representative of all
the world's MAJOR theologies [you haven't even touched the dogma of
hinduism] your argument is at best a strawman.

5. As has been shown, you're points are mostly non-sequiturs even against
the trumped up list you've created.

In short, your argument is a strawman, and you haven't even succeeded in
debunking your own strawman.

As pointed out,
this destroys the claims and viability of an
entire class of possible gods, all secondary and
tertiary claims for such a god of this class also
fail, as do dogmas or secondary or tertiary
claims hanging off this class of gods in any way.

18. If a this entire class of omni-everything creator gods
cannot exist as defined, specific gods cannot

Once again, you're attempting to slip in a general statement about any
specific god when you haven't even made a successful argument against the
strawman god you've created.

Your argument fails, even in this altered version, in both its specific
and its general claims.

Gandalf Grey wrote:

"wbarwell" <wbarwell@mylinuxisp.com> wrote in message
news:127kga3svf8kued@corp.supernews.com...

IS GOD POSSIBLE? - NO.
STRONG ATHEISM'S ANSWER - PART 4

1. THE RULES AND LAWS AND LOGIC OF THE UNIVERSE

A. In part three, we saw that the Universe's rules
and laws and logic cannot have been created by
god.

No we didn't. At least nothing you wrote demonstrated the necessity of
such
a conclusion.

B. But what are these rules, these laws, this
logic?

2. The CLASS OF OMNI-EVERYTHING, CREATOR GODS
IS USELESS.

We've already gone through this and seen that everything you have to say
about your self-created, self-serving 'class' of gods is either a fallacy
of
composition or a biased sample and so invalid. It also falls prey to
Russell's paradox.

B. God as a class of omni-everything, creator gods
cannot exist as having created all as claimed.

Since you're nearly the only one making such a claim, it hardly matters.

C. Obviously, the fact that god is still referred
to as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent
shows that most of theology has failed to consider
the facts and to reason rationally about the
facts.

Since the above attributes do not represent "most of theology" again, all
we
have here is your fallacy of composition.

Theology does not see and has not seen its
methodology is failed.

Which theology?

E. We do see rules and laws of the universe by
careful observation.

What is the difference between rules and laws? We do not see "rules and
laws" of the universe at all. We see the results of some of the laws of
the
universe whether we're careful or not.

The rules of physics,
chemistry, biology, cosmology, derived by
observation,

Are not the rules of the universe. I should think you'd know that at
least.

3. CAN A GOD EVEN EXIST?

We see that things that have complexity and think
and act and reason are made of matter, and obey
the known laws of physics and biology.

And that implies what? That we see all beings?

Can a god or deity for being that can think, and
reason exist apart of matter and energy and
dimensions and the laws and rules of the Universe?

Does one have to?

The only rules and laws we can observe do not
allow for that.

Unsupported assertion.

1. There's excellent, nearly self-evident reason to believe that we do
not
see universal laws at all.
2. There's no reason to believe that the laws that govern what we do see
are
the only possible laws.
3. There's no logically neccessary reason that we see everything that is
governed by actual laws or that we ever will see everything governed by
actual physical laws.
4. There's no logical reason that the local physical laws governing what
we
do see could not under any circumstances have been caused or created by a
god.

The fact that the claims made
for a class of omni-everything creator gods
contradict each other fatally dooms these gods
anyway.

You mean the claims you choose fatally contradict the strawman you've set
up
to destroy.

Since they cannot exist as claimed,
obviously physics and the rules, laws and logic
of the Universe have nothing to do with such
entities. And there is nothing outside of these
laws, rules and logic of the Univeerse, obviously
physical, to sustain something we can prove cannot
exist.

1. You haven't proved god cannot exist. Again you dishonestly sneak your
universal assertion of god into the smaller argument.
2. There's nothing to prove that we know everything that can and does
exist
and every reason to believe that we do not know everything that can and
does
exist.

4. WHAT IS SUPERNATURAL?

A. Before Thales and the Ionian philosophers,
there was no real concept of natural and
supernatural.

That we know of historically. It's quite likely that the concept itself
was
well known before the fragmentary remains of pre-socratic philosophers.

These earliest Greek philosophers
dispensed with the idea of gods

So they thought. You assume too much as usual.

and considered
the way the world works without regards to
dieties. They adopted the word phusis to their
investigations, a word used roughly to mean
nature, a word that gave us our word physics.

B.Later philosophers explicitly introduced the
idea of god as foundation of nature, starting with
Xenophanes, as distinct from water or air as
claimed cause of the Universe, or later atomists
with their atom theories of materialsm.

C. Here we find the first dividing lines between
the natural world and the supernatural. After
Galileo, when science as we know it was well
created, this gap between the natural and
supernatural became obvious.

It was obvious long before that time. The apostle Paul was having
problems
with Greek skeptics long before this.

[skip rest of Weekly Reader summary]

F. But how do you define natural? Natural is that
which needs no supernatural to explain its
workings.

Hardly. Again, you substitute rhetoric for reality. Science attempts to
explain nature in terms of nature. Nature is what there is. Nature is
whatever is.

G. The problem for supernaturalists is they have
no facts, no real theories, just assertions. The
claims they make, heaven exists, there is a god,
we have souls, are unproven and they have no
programs for proving any assertions they make,
which sets them apart from science.

Only a moron is unaware of the difference between science and religion.
The
difference between the two does not help your claim.

H. Nor can they base such claims on the existence
of a supernatural realm,because that realm not
only seems to be absent, but cannot be proven to
exist.

Nor can science prove that it does not exist.

That was the truth you pretended to be able to disprove.

You've failed, Barwell.

Enough already Gandalf Grey. Five posts demonstrates that your
obsession to prove Barwall wrong differs little from his obsession with
claiming credit for a definitive disproof of the existence of Gods.
Niether objective is attainable.
The existence of a God 'defined' as possessing N attributes is
automatically disproved if even one of the claimed attributes is
demonstrably invalid. There then remains a 'new' God possessing N-1
attributes whose 'existence' is then open to disproof by invalidation
of an additional attribute, and so on until all attributes are
invalidated. If all attributes of all gods could be proved invalid,
then the existence of all Gods would be invalidated. IMO that is not
possible, but is not requiredI. It comes down to a definition of
existence. Do Gods exist by virtue of some sort of control over the
physical world or by virtue of the existence of their
conceptualisation by human intellect. I deny the former criterium but
accept the latter.
Surely it is incontestable that there are, and always will be,
mysteries beyond human understanding. The part cannot understand the
whole. To ascribe specific attributes to this ineffable mystery is to
invent Gods. The need to invent Gods is emotionalism, the need to
deny them is rationalism. Long live rationalism.
Zinnic