From: yohan@sam.ksu.ksu.edu (Jonathan W Newton)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: The "God Does Not Exist" Proof
Date: 16 Apr 1992 12:08:48 -0500
Organization: Kansas State University
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: sam.ksu.ksu.edu
Keywords: God


From: zeisset@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Stephan Zeisset)

No, in my opinion our perception of what is good and what is not
is right (also in God's view) - but our perception of the way how
to achive goodness is limited.
Suppose a small child has to go to the dentist :-/
It will not be able to realize that the suffering is necessary
to prevent greater suffering in the future. You can convice it
to open it's mouth only by force (e.g the psychological pressure
of the adults authority) or by making it believe that anything
what happens is for its best (it needs to trust you).


Me:

Your example does not apply.  God could: 1) never have allowed the cavity to
happen.  2)  imparted the knowledge to the child that everything was for the
best.  This assumes that god is all-good and omnipotent, unlike the dentist.

From: zeisset@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Stephan Zeisset)

|> If so, I agree that that is most probably true, assuming of course that God
|> exists.  But, by human perception and values, evils do occur, and therefore, God,
|> by the definitions of God established before, God is evil by human perception. 
|> Popular religion claims that God loves mankind and is good.  A omnipotent,
|> omniscient, benevolent being would prevent any evil from happening to those he
|> loved.  This has been the main point of discusion for a long time.  I'm sure,
|> that if there is a God, he thinks he is doing what is best by his own values
|> system.  At the same time, by man's values system, he would be allowing or
|> causing evils to befall man.  The main point of this is that a personal God who
|> has man's interests in mind is bogus.

As above, God has our interests in mind but we don't realize it.

Me:

Since god is all-good, omnipotent, and omniscient (assuming this at least), he
would have created a perfect world in which there was no suffering at all.  It
seems to me that you're taking the old "it's all for the greater good" route. 
Why can't a perfect being circumvent the evil and just have perfect goodness?  If
you're answer is "to have free-will"  see a few of my previous articles, which
remain unaswered.

rom: zeisset@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Stephan Zeisset)

I don't think it is necessary for god to be omnipotent in his
own view. It suffices if he is omnipotent in our view.
You can fully control the live of a rat in a laboratory - but
do you consider yourself omnipotent ?
Maybe we can link gods state of existence to a special sort
of human dreaming where the dreamer knows that he's dreaming.
He can't prevent evil things from happening but he can undo
them as he has full control over his dream.

Me:
well, this violates the requirements for the proof.  The proof assumes that god
is all-powerful in everything.  He, at the very least, is powerful enough to
prevent any evil from occuring.  Like i said in the initial article, a way out of
the proof (by breaking the requirements), is to say that god isn't all-powerful
(this usually brings in satan, who god wouldn't have absolute control over.  But
this isn't too popular with alot of religious people).

From: zeisset@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Stephan Zeisset)


God is not responsible for evil but for undoing its consequences.

Stephan.

Me:

Well, this means that god screwed up at one point in time, and now he is trying
to make up for his mistakes.  This again violates the idea of a perfect,
omnipotent, omniscient, all-good god.


Jon Newton - agnostic