He didn’t claim to know whether they are justifiable or not. You are claiming to know. See the difference?
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I find that the “are you omniscient” question in there is one I get asked quite a bit. Two notes on it.
(1) Yes, I am. Or, rather, Am.
(2) Weirdly, this only gets asked when the person asking it is utterly unable to defend the underlying proposition. I’ll say that, oh, for example, it’s not exactly admirable to slit the throats of children, even if it is done in response to a sincere belief that this has been commanded by an extraordinarily resonant voice from the heavens (and WHO among us doesn’t follow the commands of extraordinarily resonant voices that seem to come from nowhere?), and then I get asked if I’m omniscient. The reasoning here is, I suppose, that I must either be omniscient or wrong. I have not found that particular dichotomy to be either true or helpful.
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This is a good point and even better question. Any truth claim should be evaluated based on the evidence, reasons, facts and logic offered in support of that claim. I have earlier presented evidence and reasons why we as theists conclude that a non-contingent reality undergirds all contingent reality, and this this reality is the source of all being. If by “Obatala” you are referring to what I described, then we are talking about the same thing in that regard. Evidence for the veracity of Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection include the biographies we call the gospels, references to Jesus and his movement by secular historical sources, and historical sources in the Bible such as Acts. If indeed Jesus was real, lived, was executed, and God raised him from the dead, then this supports Jesus’ own claims about being God incarnate, and further adds credence to his teachings. One of his teachings is that he is God in human form, and exclusively so. The question is whether the evidence successfully makes the case. Anyone can evaluate the claims, evidence offered, and reach their conclusions about it.
So indeed it seems we are talking about the same reality.
How do the arguments from the resurrection of Jesus Christ, fulfilled biblical prophecies, and the radical change in the disciples’ life and belief work for Obatala? How do the arguments from morality and consciousness work for Obatala?
This is a fair question. However, this framing of the question seems to assume that Christianity is not objectively true. If Christianity is objectively true, then of course its claims regarding the purpose of life are objectively true. If Christianity is not objectively true, then we would need some other grounding of objective ethical, moral and metaphysical claims. Regarding purpose, I am not sure what that would be at this point. The same goes for ethical claims. Physical reality says nothing about purpose, morals, rights, wrongs, human rights, humanism, hopes, dreams, etc. If there is no objective ground of morality, for example, then there is no such thing as right or wrong, justice, injustice, evil, good, etc. The best we could say is that we don’t like murder, enslavement, genocide, etc. However we could not say those are wrong if there is no ground for objective morality.
Atheist intellectual John Gray, in his book Straw Dogs, observes that humans are always looking for some type of savior. He notes, derisively, religious folks look for some deity, many atheists look to humanism, and secularists look to science. He retorts there are no saviors in any of these things and finds it laughable that our species can’t just get over the fact that at the end of the day we are just clumps of matter and that’s it. He claims there is no God, humans are not worth anything because there is no such thing as worth, and science will not save us or bring fulfillment. So rape, murder, helping the poor, feeding the hungry, genocide, growing farms, etc. are not right or wrong - they just are. Obviously I don’t agree with his atheism, but I think he has a point about the inability of non-theistic worldviews to ground things like purpose and morality.
That being said, I do think the transcendentals - truth, beauty, goodness, knowledge, etc. are enough to suggest some degree of purpose in life. To what extent, however, I am not sure.
Seriously? The reasons I presented clearly incorporated the evidence as the reasons reflect how I establish connections between the evidence to support my claims. This is why I asked you specifically if you had issues with evidence I provided that we could address those as well.
Yes I brought it into the discussion because I determined it was germane to my point. Of course man-made suffering is different and distinct from natural disasters and the calamities caused by nature which humans do not control or can influence. No one is running from that and I never implied that you were making a point about man-made suffering. I wanted to address it as I think though they are distinct issues nonetheless they are in some way connected. So it’s not a red-herring.
Well it’s a point that doesn’t at all follow from what I said. In the psychotic killer you have several things occurring included some type of dysfunctional psychology which may or may not be the person’s fault, and the act of murdering. Recall that God asks us to love our neighbor as ourselves. There is also what God permits and what God actually wills. Recall also that Christianity holds that creation is, for a variety of reasons, run amok in some ways. Regardless, for reasons I mentioned above, God has made it clear that he can and will restore these lives.
Nobody is prancing about - you asked for evidence and I asked what you mean by “hard evidence”. How about you stop prancing about and give me a definition or tell me what you mean. I have already referenced the evidence from the Bible, the life and teachings of Jesus and from the experience and being of the transcendentals. Obviously, that doesn’t suffice so I need to know what you mean by “hard evidence”, and what problems you have with the evidence provided for the claim.
An analysis of physical reality tells us very little about whether God is good or not. There is no good reason to think that physical reality exhausts being or expresses all of reality. Just looking at someone and doing a catalogue of their physical characteristics will not tell you much about their personality, intentions, hopes, dreams, etc. Again, when dealing with God we are dealing with being that can be understood in many ways including agency.
If a person is saved then definitely their suffering is not pointless as they spend eternity with God and enjoy the fulfillment of their being in the source of all existence. That is not pointless existence especially if they are calling into being for that very purpose and their sufferings were for specific reasons.
This is a hard, cold opinion and nothing more which is consistent with several unfounded assumptions about the nature of reality (e.g. physicalism, naturalism, etc.). It is entirely consistent with the observational data of human existence from science, rationality, logic, reflection, etc. to conclude the exact opposite. We have a universe that has stable patterns (laws) and environments that enable us to learn, describe, and predict the universe. We have a universe that is organized in such a way as to be open to rational investigation. The result is that the universe is organized in almost step-by-step tutorial fashion for us to learn about it, and how to interact with the various components contained therein. Roses have thorns and bacteria evolve resistance and humanity continues to, in some sense, thrive because the universe is so nurturing as to provide life with the capabilities and resources to learn, grow and sustain itself when faced with challenges. Rather than a place that snuff’s out life immediately, or a place that weakens life with no challenges, we have a universe balanced in all its attributes such that life experiences an environment conducive to growth. Those thorns, for example, help the rose live and defend itself from dangers. Fire can burn you or provide heat and warmth for life to thrive.
Your comment seems to expect a resort whereas the universe is more like a gym. You can say the gym is a cold, uncaring place filled with all manner of obstacles that make movement so hard and almost difficult. You can justify this cold, uncaring gym perspective by appealing to the muscles and cardiovascular strength people have to develop just to deal with all those obstacles. However, the purpose of the gym is to do exactly that - challenge you for you to grow in your capacity and further benefit you. The universe is meant for us to work hard, grow in our capacity, explore reality, at some point go to other planets and thrive, etc. Reality is so constructed that it challenges us to learn, seek answers to our questions, and ultimately in our pursuit of truth, knowledge, goodness, etc. to find the source of our being and all that is in God. This is not discernable from a study of only the physical features of reality anymore than I can discern the purpose of mass just by measuring its physical dimensions. Again, we also have no reason to think that physical reality exhausts all of reality
The question is, rightfully so, how do I know this is the purpose of life. I have already addressed this somewhat earlier in this question and also in my earlier responses.
What does (1) mean? Regarding (2), I doubt it.
If the claim is that God does not have morally justifiable reasons then it is legitimate to ask how the person knows. In this event @Michael_Okoko made it clear that was not his claim and instead wanted me to defend my claims.
Thank you. It’s difficult for me to imagine how we got this far without your input. 
You’re clearly ignoring my input and plowing ahead with your false bifurcation.
If you claim to know something is true, no one needs to know that the opposite is true to challenge your claim. Repeatedly misrepresenting the positions of those challenging you is an implicit admission that you don’t know.
I agree.
Have you ever considered that perhaps someone may just be genuinely mistaken in understanding what someone is saying? Why impute to that person a misrepresentation? Perhaps they just don’t understand and require further clarification.
Because of the repetition.
Then they should ask for clarification instead of engaging in repeated misrepresentation.
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Completely irrelevant to my question. Why should I worship the Christian Almighty God but not Obatala the Almighty God of Yoruba traditional worship?
Obatala and Yahweh are Almighty Gods but are distinct. For example, Obatala has a wife. In addition, Olodumare is the actual Almighty in Yoruba traditional religion, while Obatala is his son. However, Obatala is sometimes called Almighty and was the creator of the earth and its inhabitants. Olodumare had other sons and daughters (orishas).
Completely irrelevant to my question on which Almighty God to serve.
Nope unless Yahweh has a wife too and lots of children.
Arguments like the Kalam Cosmological Arguments would serve to defend the existence of Olodumare (let’s drop Obatala) or Yahweh. That’s what I meant.
Olodumare is the source of morality just like Yahweh. He is freaking Almighty God with children.
Nice try evading the question. I repeat, Without recourse to your religion, how did you arrive at the conclusion that our chief purpose in life is to know God (presumably just the Christian one)?
In other words, you have no answer to my question. Next!
Man-made evil was irrelevant to the discussion. I didn’t bring it up knowing the typical theist response and stuck to the problem of natural evil. If you know you don’t have the answers to some questions just say so and stop beating about the bush.
I think you have forgotten the conversation trail. Recap:
First, you did not rule out God being a psychotic person who delights in the suffering of humans.
Second, you haven’t in anyway shown why an all-knowing, all-powerful entity can’t be a psychotic killer and a source of love.
Psychotic killers can do this. Islamic terrorists do this too.
Just as other religions.
Its funny that when Christians are asked to provide evidence for a claim unrelated to God, they seem to know what to show but when it comes to God, they somehow get amnesia.
If I told you that Lionel Messi (I am a big fan) is one of the greatest footballers at the moment, then I must have used some sort of metric to help arrive at that conclusion. I could use the number of goals he has scored, dribbles he has made, awards he has received, etcetera to make my claim of him being a great footballer (or soccer player as Americans say).
So tell me, in what measurable way did you arrive at God being the Good? Or are you just repeating what you heard at Sunday School?
I have, your turn.
Is this a joke?
It can be pointless. Someone dies peacefully in his sleep and goes to heaven, another dies painfully in the ICU from lung failure due to Covid-19 and goes to heaven. Kindly tell what was the point of the tragic death of the latter?
Who is talking about existence?
Opinion? Dude, I have in my PC the genome of a microbe that has genetic determinants of resistance to a huge collection of antimicrobials. Without these sort of defenses that bug’s ancestors and itself would have gone extinct a long time ago from antimicrobial application by humans. Those things keep the bug safe, but contribute to our harm when those bugs make us sick. That the universe is a cold, uncaring place is glaring fact even though it permits life.
Show me that science.
How does this in anyway obviate the fact that the universe wants to kill you and I?
And so bloody what? How does this in anyway obviate the fact that the universe wants to kill you and I?
Are you playing with me? because this is quite silly. Maybe you could demonstrate how so.
A rose has thorns because it doesn’t want some other part of the universe to kill it. Bacteria evolve resistance to antimicrobials because they don’t want some other part of the universe to kill them. We develop drugs, healthcare technologies, etcetera so that other parts of the universe don’t kill us. We are constantly fighting the universe to stay alive. A hen feeding and cuddling it’s chicks is nurturing those chicks to adulthood, not so with our universe which wants to end our existence the moment we are conceived.
Do you live under a rock or on the moon? Living organisms continually evolve new survival strategies because if they don’t, they die. The universe isn’t conducive, we (all life forms) are the ones who try to make it so
Comparing a gym to the universe tells me you don’t know what you are talking about. Gyms are built to be safe for users and only experienced personnel or athletes are allowed to use any special equipment. In our universe there is no such thing. Try going out in space without any protective gear and tell me if you won’t get fried by solar winds or suffocate due to the absence of oxygen.
True, but not so with our universe. Our universe wants to kill us like it did the dinosaurs 60 million years ago.
This is becoming silly.
In other words, you were making vacuous claims about the universe’s purpose. Good to know.
This has been an unfruitful discussion. Your continued evasion of questions and inability to declare you don’t know is exasperating. You can have the last word. I am done.
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(1) Means, to paraphrase, “ask a silly question, get a silly answer.”
(2) You may doubt it, but it’s odd to doubt it while illustrating it. Here, you asserted that your gods have good reasons for things, and when this was doubted, you asked if @Michael_Okoko was omniscient. (He is, by the way, and if you express doubt about this, I will ask you if you are omniscient. That’s always a brilliant line of argument.) You certainly have demonstrated a complete inability to address yourself to supporting your claim, and an interest only in burden-shifting, something characteristically done by people who, like you, cannot support the claims they’ve made.
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Because the evidence I have provided, if valid, would show that what Christians mean by God is true and real. I don’t understand what the issue is here. We should only be concerned with what is true and real and what we have good evidence and reasons to believe actually exists.
Then we are certainly not talking about the same thing.
Are you serious? My argument is that if Jesus is really God then we should worship him. I don’t understand why this is such a difficult concept that we should worship God if we have good evidence that he is true and real.
I agree. The key arguments in natural theology don’t lead us to Christian theism but to theism in general, and classical theism in particular.
Ok.
Yet you ignore where I basically said I don’t think it’s possible to know the purpose of life outside of recourse to theism.
I said: “If Christianity is not objectively true, then we would need some other grounding of objective ethical, moral and metaphysical claims. Regarding purpose, I am not sure what that would be at this point.” Ergo, outside of theism, I don’t know of a way to ground purpose. Physical reality doesn’t seem up to the task.
Are you reading the words you are responding to? What preceded “…That being said”? Obviously I have been crystal clear about the fact of not being able to locate purpose outside of theism.
I have provided evidence and reasons as to why I think God is love and not a psychotic killer. For example I talked about the revelation of God in Christ. Natural theology arguments and evidence don’t tell us a lot about God’s nature per se. An all-knowing, all-powerful entity can be a psychotic killer and a source of love. That’s not logically impossible. However, I have argued why I think the actual source of all reality is in fact, perfect love. Am I missing something?
You are right other religions do this. I have also provided reasons I think that Christianity is true.
I have said many times. From natural theology we don’t get that God is good, just that God exists. The evidence for God being good includes the person of Jesus Christ, the fact that we experience things like good, beauty, etc. and other transcendentals that must have a source, and the teachings of the Bible.
Regarding the transcendentals - such as love, truth, beauty, goodness, etc. - they too point us to a source for these aspects of being since they are not at all reducible to physical reality. It’s not as if truth is the second derivative of a position function in physics, goodness is when a substance reaches a certain concentration of hydrogen ions. So, it is argued, these transcendentals must have a source in something that exemplifies these qualities infinitely. We think that source is what we call God.
Even if you disagree, this directly answers the question as to how I know that God is good. Your insistence on “measurable way” does not lend itself to moral questions. After all, as you point out, anyone can do good acts but that doesn’t mean they are indeed good and we can’t use the acts alone as an indicator of whether or not they are good. Someone who enslaves a person, and someone who loves a person can both feed them, care for the, and defend them from attacks. So I don’t have a “measurable way” to arrive at God being the good.
You would like Messi. I am a Ronaldo fan.
What does this even mean?
I don’t know what the point was of the tragic death of the latter. I have said this repeatedly that I don’t know in cases like this. I said I trust that God has a reason and I stated why I trust that God has a reason. What that reason is, I have no idea.
That the universe is a cold, uncaring place is an opinion. You would have to know the purpose of the universe not just assume it doesn’t have one. I have provided reasons for why I think the universe and reality is suffused with purpose.
For example, we have observed that the laws of nature have been constant. We don’t observe any appreciable changes in, for example, the force of gravity or the strong or weak nuclear forces such that it destabilizes our existence. This supports my point that the universe’s stability lends itself to rational investigation. Einstein, on this point, remarked: “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible”.
First how does the universe “want” to kill us? Second, if the universe really wanted to kill us, unstable laws and frequent radical phase shifts would do the job. Imagine if tomorrow gravity increases or decreases dramatically. We would be gone in an instant. Suppose the strong or weak nuclear forces changed. We would be gone in instant. There are an infinite number of ways the universe could take us out instantly. If the universe “wanted” to kill us it wouldn’t have to take 5 billion years with an occasional catastrophe to do it. Meanwhile, this universe that “wants” to kill us apparently provides us with an environment that permits us to learn and extend our ability to thrive. This killer universe hypothesis seems to just be rank physicalism.
An awesome way to kill inhabitants of the universe would be for them to not understand the universe.
Look at the progress of science. Aren’t we learning things about the universe in almost step by step fashion. Geometry, calculus, then physics and now quantum physics and whatever else lies in the future. Look at the other sciences. Human progress continues. How is this silly?
The universe has near limitless resources at its disposal to kill us instantly. I guess after 5 billion years it just can’t figure out how to do it. Regardless, "want’ implies desire. The universe no more wants to kill us than fire wants to burn us and take away all life.
First it’s an analogy. Second, in a gym you wouldn’t try to life 5,000 pounds either. Third, we go out in space with space suits.
You saying the universe wants to kill us doesn’t make it so.
So unless a claim is derived from an analysis of physical features its vacuous? Why? How did you come to that conclusion if that is your position?
Whatever.
I admitted that he did not make the claim and that I needed to support any claim that I made. What’s the problem? Did you not read all of my replies? Did you not read even what you replied to?
What claim did I not support? We don’t have to debate it, I am just curious and it will be for my own edification.
I know it’s a long thread but at least read them before making claims. For example, I never said anything about “gods”. What are you talking about? It’s one thing to disagree with someone but you should at least reflect their statements and positions accurately before disagreeing.
But, of course, he never did make such a claim. You just ran out there with the “well, are you omniscient?” question in response to his asking how you knew that your gods (or, if you like, your god) had good reasons for such things. You appeared to think that it was inappropriate for a non-omniscient being to express doubts on such things. And my comment about what sort of argumentative tactic that is is not really affected by the fact that you then acknowledged that he hadn’t made a claim to know that there were no such reasons.
The claim that your god has good reasons for “allowing” a pandemic. Nothing in your subsequent responses about this constitutes evidence of any sort bearing in any way upon that proposition.
You did speak of your god in the singular. I get so used to the fact that some people are polytheists, and others are only nominally monotheistic, that I usually use the plural, especially as the questions about the motivations of gods are the same whether there’s one of them or twenty.
I don’t mean to be unpleasant about this. But if you have lived your life as a Christian, I can guarantee that you have no idea how many times one gets asked if he’s omniscient as a sort of taunting dare in discussions over religion. Observe the smallest, most obvious, most indisputable things, e.g. “if one of the gods commands people to commit genocide, that god is not morally good,” and all you get back from some people is, “oh, yeah, buddy? Are you omniscient? An’ if you ain’t, what makes you so sure that murderin’ people is bad?” It becomes evident that this is one of those go-to things that people say when they have nothing worthwhile to say at all.
It’s fine, certainly, to try to imagine that a god or gods might have reasons for causing horrible suffering. It’s a strange hobby, to be sure, but who doesn’t have strange hobbies? But anyone who does indulge in such a strange hobby cannot help but have noticed that his views will never, and cannot ever, have evidentiary support. That being so, it hardly seems right to fire this kind of tired rhetorical blank at somebody who dares to doubt.
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I understand what you are saying, but it wasn’t an argumentative tactic on my part. I simply had a mistaken understanding of what he was saying due in part to some assumptions I made about his comment. I enjoy these discussions because I enjoy learning and seeing how other people think.
I can see how that type of response would become tiring.
Very interesting assessment. I don’t agree but I do understand how you could come to such a conclusion.
Nothing wrong with having doubts and questions and seeking answers.
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I don’t think we know anything about that which isn’t already based entirely on faith (belief not based on evidence) that God exists, and that some ancient writings accurately reflect the character and nature of God.
Trust in something for no good reason is faith. Faith, in the absence of any evidence of what some supposed future after you die will be like. You “trust” that a character you read about in some ancient texts has prepared some future for you that you have never seen and no evidence of, will somehow make whatever horrors that have occurred in history all be worth it.
There really was offered no “evidence and reason” in your response. I see only the faith and nothing else.
Yes it most definitely and certainly is. Blind belief in the absence of evidence, and particularly when the evidence is against you, is outright virtuous in the Bible. The more obscenely your circumstance you find yourself in appears incompatible with the existence of a benevolent God, the more virtuous it is suggested to be when you nevertheless still believe. When God is being directly Cruel to you the Christian ideal reaction is to just blindly stick with faith and trust in God anyway. Christians are taught to admire the man who would knife his son because God told him to, through an intermediary.
This is neither evidence nor reason. It’s just blind faith.
And let’s not forget John 20:29 “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen, and have believed.”
Evidence doesn’t have to oppose faith (it can merely be absent, leaving you with having nothing but faith), but faith can be held without it evidence, and it is thought to be virtuous among Christians to believe even when all reason and evidence turns against you. Because some times it just feels good to believe.
This is why famous Christian apologist writes:
“We’ve already said that it’s the Holy Spirit who gives us the ultimate assurance of Christianity’s truth. Therefore, the only role left for argument and evidence to play is a subsidiary role. I think Martin Luther correctly distinguished between what he called the magisterial and ministerial uses of reason. The magisterial use of reason occurs when reason stands over and above the gospel like a magistrate and judges it on the basis of argument and evidence. The ministerial use of reason occurs when reason submits to and serves the gospel… Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa.” - William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith p. 36
It’s why you can find billboards and signs such as these:
Why Christians will respond to questions, like this:
It’s why there even exists theological concepts such as presuppositionalism, and the Christian (and creationist) organizations that explicitly implement the concept of holding faith over reason and evidence:
These aren’t accidents. They’re not flukes. They’re not mistaken or confused. Faith, the blind, servile, volitionally stubborn belief even in the face of outright disconfirmatory evidence, is a Christian virtue - and that idea has straightforward scriptural support.
Yes it is. When speaking of the nature and character of God, it is nothing else than that. You’ve never seen the future you believe God has prepared for you, or the afterlife. Nor God.
So you have evidence to base that on, that you don’t have for God’s putative future that makes all hitherto earthly horrors justified and worth it. Morally justifiable reasons for countless atrocities is believed without any shred of evidence, on nothing but blind faith. No evidence, no reasons. Just beliefs.
They’d have to come true within my lifetime, not some obscure and unspecified future that, to make matters even more absurd, are supposed to only occur when after I die. I don’t even believe one can come back from that, which just raises the absurdity of the faith to extremes.
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I appreciate your detailed reply. It’s good to have every point I make addressed and taken seriously. I am working on a reply myself; I have just been swamped at work. I am also responding to keep this topic open. What would this topic be without my reply 
?
So, it is forthcoming shortly, stay tuned.
Thanks.
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It’s as if the various religions have been honed by intelligent modification and natural selection until only those that can successfully exclude evidence have survived.
Such an approach makes it very clear that the originators of such practices were fully aware that they were conning their followers into believing something contrary to reality.
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