Greg Benage
7.5K posts
Greg Benage
@GregBenage
Combat Systems Analyst CTR NAVSEA. Opinions on sports, games, politics and other things I really don't know anything about.
Atlanta, GA Katılım Ocak 2012
155 Takip Edilen194 Takipçiler
@Justtdavid_ Why did you make animal suffering and death the engine that populated your Creation with life?
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@Jaydon225 The monotheist is saying, “We agree God exists, but what you’re worshipping isn’t Him. *This* is Him.” Alex is right that this is a categorically different claim from “no god exists.” But that’s ok because Gervais didn’t offer the line as an argument against the existence of God.
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But a monotheist who tells another person not to believe in the god they currently do and switch to theirs is doing so on the premise that that god does not exist. It does not exist because it fails to have the attributes the monotheist believes a god must have to exist.
This is pretty much the same logic an atheist uses to refute the god of the monotheist, just with a few contextual tweaks.
For someone as smart and exposed as you, I refuse to believe you cannot understand this. 🤷🏾♂️
Alex O'Connor@CosmicSkeptic
Yeah that makes sense - so to be clear I think any theist (including monotheists) can only ever know what it’s like to not believe in a particular kind of god; they don’t know what it’s like to believe in zero gods (i.e., they don’t know what it’s like to be an atheist). A theist can only ever tell rival religions that they should ascribe a different set of properties to God, never that they shouldn’t believe in God at all. There’s a massive metaphysical difference between a theist disbelieving in a particular deity in favour of another with different characteristics, and an atheist not believing in any kind of god.
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@Shaktidass18 @Danish_SMF I didn’t mention zero. I mentioned the empty set {}. They are completely different things. The empty set is a mathematical object that contains no elements.
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@GregBenage @Danish_SMF in math 0 serves as a place holder, it is a relative nothing, like I have nothing in my bag.
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Out of nothing, nothing comes' is ancient philosophy, not proven science.
We have no experience of 'nothing.'
Even granting it, the conclusion 'therefore God' doesn't follow, it's a leap.
And if everything needs a cause, God needs one too.
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Really America™️ 🇺🇸@ReallyAmerica
@Danish_SMF It is called abductive reasoning. Everything proves that something cannot come from nothing therefore God is the only answer left. Ex nihilo nihil fit yet here we are! Atheism is equivalent to … Uhhhh uhhh! 🤣
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@Shaktidass18 @Danish_SMF Then if “nothing” is not ontologically possible (I suspect it’s just an incoherent concept…even the empty set in math is something), we never have to be concerned about how something came from nothing.
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@GregBenage @Danish_SMF a comment like this just misses the well known point being made by Parmenides when he said in the fragments of On Nature. He is saying that Being cannot come from non-being!!! Nothing is not, it is not ontological possible. as we clearly have existence!
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@Danny456080 I don’t know that anyone disagrees. A lot of the NT is Paul and other apostles running around trying to herd the cats and stamp out proto-heresies.
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@GregBenage Right, and that’s exactly my point. ‘Divine’ meant different things to different early Christians. Some saw him as a pre-existent heavenly being others as a man adopted by God at his baptism or resurrection
That diversity is the evidence there was no single original Christology
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@woarna_is_right D.) Be a rule consequentialist and adopt the rule that a rational community of actors should adopt.
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My sense is that to rationally pick blue you have to:
a.) Miscalculate the probability of picking blue being pivotal
b.) Be suicidal
c.) Be Jesus
And I'd guess there aren't that many Jesuses or suicidal people walking amongst us so…
woarna@woarna_is_right
@basedball_ Some will press blue. I just don't think it's worth risking my life to to save them unless: 1. I believe there's a good chance my blue button press puts the blue votes past the 50% threshold or, 2. I massively value other peoples lives over my own. I don't believe either.
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@AppliedBelief @_OKJ__ If there is a God and he really does command genocide and rape, then a) sucks for us and b) better the defiance of mockery than the subservience of worship.
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My favorite bible verse is Numbers 31:17–18.
Yahweh instructs Moses to tell the Israelite soldiers to do this to the midianites…
“Now therefore kill all the boys and kill every woman that is not a virgin. But all the girls that are virgins, keep them alive for yourselves.”
Ignoring the genocide here for a second , Please what does Yahweh want the isrealites soldiers to do with the virgin girls they are keeping? This is the god Christians call non believers fools for not believing…the audacity 😅.
Abbie 🌸@Slimabbie
What’s your favorite Bible verse?
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@justalexoki I have clothes that can’t be tumble dried, but I take them to the laundry.
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there's no way Americans don't do this. this is just a universal human experience
Juanjo Valiño@juanjovn
Peak europoor is having to dry our clothes like this in my living room
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@KR3Wmatic It wasn’t one thing. Intellectual maturation is a process of realizing, “Oh, that doesn’t make sense” and “I don’t actually have sufficient evidence of that” about a lot of things, not just religion. As for “turning back,” an omnipotent being could easily reveal itself to me. 🤷♂️
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@WilliamMcgibney Maybe it isn’t, maybe it didn’t, maybe it was, maybe there are more or less, etc. If only there were some way to rigorously investigate these questions and test possible answers without all the baseless speculation.
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If the universe is going to end, then it must have had a beginning. If it had a beginning, it wasn't always there. If there are only 2 choices
Eternal universe
Eternal God
If the eternal universe is ruled out we are left with an eternal God.
Saganism@Saganismm
"If we say God made the universe, then surely the next question is, "Who made God?" If we say God was always here, why not say the universe was always here? If we say that the question "Where did God come from?" is too tough for us poor mortals to understand, then why not say that the question of "Where did the universe come from?" is too tough for us mortals?" = Carl Sagan
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@gfodor OTOH, if I’m inclined to vote blue, I’m weighing the (very) small chance that my vote is decisive against my prediction about the probability of suicide. The lower the chance of suicide, the better the bet that I would be the pivotal vote looks. (It’s still going to be desperate)
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@jaimelo21477183 @darwintojesus Alex is saying that brothers sitting around debating the nationality of their unknown father is not an argument that they don’t have a father. I agree. You essentially barged in and shouted, “Their father is German!”
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@jaimelo21477183 @darwintojesus Alex is correct that Ricky’s line is a poor argument against the existence of God. But Ricky didn’t offer it as such an argument—he offered it as an explanation for why we *both* reject the claim “Allah is the necessary ground of being” but I also reject your claim that Jesus is.
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Atheists won't listen to me when I explain the difference between 0 to 1 and 10 to 11. Will they listen to another atheist?
Alex O'Connor@CosmicSkeptic
I’m getting a lot of hate for this reel. What do you think? (P.S.: if you say “but we have evidence for dads I believe you have missed the point.)
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@jaimelo21477183 @darwintojesus I agree with you about that, but you still missed the point of the conversation. Sorry.
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@GregBenage @darwintojesus This is why atheists like Graham Oppy are very refreshing.
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If you were 18 years old now, what career would you choose?
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@Shaktidass18 @Danish_SMF If there is nothing, there can be no rule or law that “something cannot come from nothing,” because such a rule or law would be something. 😱
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@Danish_SMF You're profoundly misunderstanding the ancient axiom "Out of nothing, nothing comes/ex nihilo nihil fit"! It is saying that something does not come from nothing. the only thing that can come from nothing is nothing!!! The axiom is not saying that nothing exists.
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@Kneelingheathen @Danish_SMF “Excitation” as in “fluctuation.” It has to fluctuate, per Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. 😄
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@Kneelingheathen @Danish_SMF The field itself isn’t a “material.” What we call “matter” is an excitation in a field with specified properties. What we call “mass” is an interaction with a different field (the Higgs field).
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From the electron field, which we know exists because quantum field theory makes predictions accurate to 10 decimal places.
What that field emerges from?
I don't know.
Neither do you.
The difference: I admit my ignorance.
You fill it with 'God' and call it knowledge.
Kneeling_heathen@Kneelingheathen
@Danish_SMF You've walked into a trap. What does an electron emerge from ?
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@JoelWBerry I wish there was someone comparable on the theist side. I love David Bentley Hart, but he’s very dismissive of anyone unwilling to share his metaphysical commitments. Plantinga, Swinburne try.
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I’ve always respected Alex’s willingness to steel man Theism despite the fact he doesn’t believe himself. He knows the arguments for God better than most believers do.
Alex O'Connor@CosmicSkeptic
I’m getting a lot of hate for this reel. What do you think? (P.S.: if you say “but we have evidence for dads I believe you have missed the point.)
English