Jibninjas

Thank you Powder, and happy to be here. First, I was speaking pretty broadly and was not trying to make any arguments in that post. As far as evidence, I think there is plenty (obviously as I am a theist). Reality is imo the biggest piece of evidence. There are plenty of arguments out there like the teleological argument, arguments from design, argument from reason, etc. These are some of the arguments that exist currently. These are not the arguments that seem to be discussed here. You say, or more famously said by Sagan, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I would agree, and this would apply to atheists as well. Or at least to strong atheists. The claim that everything exists as it exists as a matter of brute fact is quite the claim. I am a theists because when you drill down, everything in reality either exists because of a creator or exists as a brute fact (it exists because it exists). I find that the creator explanation is more parsimonious as well as having more explanatory power. And you should have stepped in and rebuked the posts that have made the claim that no gods exist with the same attitude as you did me. I was not meaning attack anyone personally, but the level of discussion. Also, I did explain in decent detail in another thread on of the reasons why a specific argument was wrong. No one has yet to respond. Also, I couldn't possibly respond to every argument made here in that post, so saying that without doing so lacks intellectual integrity is a bit disingenuous, don't you think? Most of all I was just disappointed. When I saw there was a atheist/theism section here I got excited as I was sure there would be high class intellectual discussion here. I would love to be proved wrong, and to be fair have only glanced through the threads. So overall this could be exactly what I was hoping it to be, but I wanted to share my agreement with regard to the respect given to the theistic position.

I am new to this forum and just wanted to chime in here. I mostly wanted to respond to your response to the OPs claim of lack of respect. I have been looking through this section of the site and have noticed the same thing that the OP states, which is a lack of respect. Now I might mean it in a different way though. I don't care about people calling people names or some such nonsense, but the respect of actually following the current philosophical debate around the existence of God. What I have found is the atheists here don't seem to understand or even be aware of any of the current positions of religious philosophers. Nor do they seem to know they current (or actually very old) responses to atheists points. For example, the sort of reasoning that I see here is "God cannot create a rock so big he cannot lift it, therefore god cannot be omnipotent, therefore god does not exist." This line of reasoning was shown to be invalid decades ago! I came to this forum because I like Stefan and found much of his logic to be sound. I assumed, apparently incorrectly, that those who came to his site would be of a higher intellectual level. What I have found is people championing arguments that were shown to be wrong before most of them were probably born. Arguing against the type of reasoning of a 12 year old average church goer does not make you intelligent. I used to post on a board that was mostly atheists. And if an atheist said something like "there is a mountain of evidence that god does not exist", a majority of the atheists there would jump down that posters throat about what an absurd statement that is to make and how he is making the rest of them look bad. But here I see that statements like that is par for the course. Hopefully someone can show me where I am wrong as I always enjoy a good intellectual discussion about the existence of god.

Wow, I rarely come upon someone that makes such a bold statement as there being a "mountain of empirical evidence that there simply are no gods in existence". Could you point me to your thread, or a thread, where any of this mountain of empirical evidence is discussed? Also, in order to discuss in abstract the compatibility of omniscience and god you in no way have to concede anything nor would you have to recognize any of the other arguments. I am not sure why you think this. Could you elaborate?

I did not read his book so I don't quite know the context of the quoted section, but there are definitely some issues there. First, depending on his definition of omniscience and omnipotence, on what grounds would such a being need to change what will happen tomorrow? There can be no new information in which to change his previous actions nor could such a being make an incorrect decision on his actions. So the point would be moot. Such a being would never encounter a situation in which said being would change what would happen tomorrow. Now maybe you are just asking if such a being could do such a thing, then this is just another "Could God create a rock so big he cannot lift it?" question. This has been long discredited in the philosophic community as our idea of what it means to be omnipotent has changed. This is not getting into the fact that if such a being was ever to change what will happen tomorrow said being would have previously known (because it is all knowing) that the being would change what was going to happen tomorrow from eternity thus retaining his omniscient status. A lot of the conversation also depends on what theory of time (A or B) you subscribe to. I think it is helpful when looking at omniscience in the context of possible worlds (which I would elaborate more on if anyone cared). Second, I think that it is very important to point out that neither omniscience nor omnipotence is a necessary condition a creator god. In other words, for there to be a being that created all of reality (often labeled God) such a being does not necessarily have to be omniscient or omnipotent. If this is true, then by defeating the idea of omniscience or omnipotence or their compatibility you have not defeated the idea of a creator god. You have only, if you are successful that is, defeated one specific concept/attribute of a god. I mentioned earlier about the definition or understanding of what it means to be omnipotent. The same is important of omniscience. If you are interested in such topics as god's omniscience and free will I suggest you look up open theism. Many scholars today agree that the definition of omniscience should be "knowing all that exists to be known". The outcome of a free will action is not in the set of all that exists to be known. The idea that a being would "know" what a square circle looks like is no more interesting that the idea that an omnipotent being would be able to create a rock so big that even he could not lift it.