And this:

At best it is an argument that Atheism leads people to do bad things, so it is bad and we should have faith instead.

It might have been an “at best” moment except that was not my line nor implied.

What I DID say, or at least heavily implied, is that errors of intent or omissions among either religious or secular groups demonstrate nothing but non-adherence to one’s own standards. Atheism has nothing to say or demonstrate (indeed, it CAN’T, logically) about evil deeds done in its name. It merely says there are those who move “outside the mainstream of thought” or some other amorphous definition of the Good. The problem here is that for secular minds there is no exactitude in any definition about morals. They shift so rapidly that if this were a ship you can’t trouble yourself with an anchor, so to speak. One can always say that murder and death and disease and tyranny are unpleasant, but per the modern secularist mind these are mere value judgments on personal input, are wholly subjective, and demonstrate nothing to their own satisfaction. I can’t say “behold, I am the head nipper” and no one can honestly say from a secularist point of view that what I have done is wrong or morally misplaced or even suspect if the secularist standard is that morals are subjective or mere sociological instruments/social structures provided by mother nature to help us get along, etc. What happens if I don’t care to get along with anyone? I CAN be labeled, ostracized, derided for making people miserable, etc., and I can be stopped by the cops. But that is mere social convention. That is an actual/Reaction analysis. Not final truth. Many things are painful and annoying and destructive but not necessarily evil. Like having a tooth pulled. And we’re told there are too many human beings for the biosphere to handle anyhow. If I become the Grand Beheadman the only thing certain detractors could say is that I cause misery. Which is not the same as saying I’m immoral. And I could rehash that crap about “for a higher cause”–as the modern secular realm does not recognize such entities unless they deal with some latest fad or social cause celebre’, etc. Some of the most gruesome things in history are done for a putatively better world. Humanists love humanity, as one writer said, the trouble is they often hate individual humans in some encounters.

No–I have no easy-does-it quip about the existence of anything. Not even the table the computer sits on. But what I DO have is the demonstration that mere social convention, convenience, contrivance, and whiffle bat pleasure is not the same as moral suasion due to higher concerns. One might as well say that since dogs are communal—therefore they have “morals. since they have genetic ingraining to “get along.” Or that pleasure and comfort and wellness in body and society equals some nebulous and improvable focus on “the good.”

What I also mentioned is that in these kinds of fightpicking, certain individuals have in mind some glossy reference version of secularism on PC grounds (like Dr. Dawkins) , claims that he is not “looking at bad numbers and body counts”, but then while whitewashing his own memory of others who’ve used the title “atheist” he does just the body count when it comes to the Church. Hmmm. He matches the ideal with the non-ideal, the perfect picture vs. the old photo from the attic. You’d think fairness was a virtue also, but remember what I said, some just switch the terms around until they are meaningless. Atheists are adept at this and hone it to fine art.

I mention all the above not as an exclusive claim to God but to rather point out that the standard of blaming Christians and whonot based on perceived injustice in the secular mind (regarding certain hip issues and celebrated social causes) should certainly get no more attention as a DISproof than what others do for some other goal.

–SWT

PS–I doubt that the victims of various purges and tyrannies over the years would so wryly regard their plight as the strawman presentation of certain “secular’ ideas.

Your comment there hurtles out quite a few strawmen, which you eloquently knock down. They remain straw men though.

None of the above defends the “truth” of the existence of a deity, nor the validity of theism. At best it is an argument that Atheism leads people to do bad things, so it is bad and we should have faith instead.

Both Atheism and the various world religions lead some people to doing bad things. The good:bad behaviour axis is not proof of the existence of any god.

It may be nice to remember the “good old days” of the past, before the rise of Secular Humanism (if it has ever risen) but beware of looking at the past through rose tinted glasses.

Likewise it must be part of some ideological bias that says that the experimentation in “scientific atheism” is therefore off limits to further investigation, even as it has liquified many orders of magnitude more human beings than the crimes of “organized religion.”–and continues to do so at the trickle rate in places as various as Red China and South America. None other than the very non-theistic Allen Orr has commented that if what is good for the goose is doubleplus for the sauce, then we have to forego the Dawkins route of comparing “real” faith to perfect atheism and take the history (and therefore, the reality), of “real” faces of atheism for what they are–horrific, and in point of fact the entire gruesome history of modernity and secularism has been little more than a giant social experiment in human engineering.

So much for logic. As I never see that rather fair equivocation any more as in the old days when better men, atheists among them. understood this.

Pythonesque indeed.

But I do listen, and more importantly, I see what is around me. Moreover, Christ never advocated the subjugation of entire people’s under banner’s of horror under the imprimateur of social progress. Religion does this, and therefore men. This is not the same as saying God advocates it, and certainly it has little to say about the intention of faith, which is a separate animal from “organized religion” and ritual. The twain are not the same.

Truly enough for this audience,

-SWT

His omnipotence is connected to his nature since being omnipotent is part of what he is. Omnipotence, then, must be consistent with what he is and not with what he is not, since His omnipotence is not an entity to itself. Therefore, God can only do those things that are consistent with his nature. He cannot lie because it is against his nature to do so. Not being able to lie does not mean he is not God or that he is not all- powerful.

Reading it gives me a headache. It must be part of the “nature” of being a Christian that you can not make sense…