"Is God a Delusion?" A Critique of Dawkins' The God Delusion at the Sheldonian Theater

[Dan110]

Let me share with you the seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist, Blaise Pascal argument for God's existence know as Pascal's Wager. Basically, every human is involved in the game know as Life with only two possible bets to make and live by. The first is to bet on that God does exists so you live out your life accordingly and if you are wrong, you only loose small finite things such as pleasures, luxuries, etc. But if you are right and God does exist, There is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain.
Same for those who choose to believe God does not exist. If you are right, then you don't loose anything and have enjoyed a life full of pleasures and self indulgences. But if you are wrong, you face an eternity of suffering.
It is up to everyone to decide how they want to bet their life's in this game of Life.

Visit gatewaytotruth.com

[Nightvid Cole]

Craig needs to stop paying attention to intellectual midgets like dawkins. His book, although held as the "gospel" of the pathetic religion of new atheism is not even worth the paper it's printed on. It's not science, it's not philosophy and it's not logic. It's just anger-drenched sophistry. In fact, sheer stupidity if you consider how irrational and desperate the so-called arguments (if you can call them that) actually are.

But I suppose, someone needs to educate the anti-intellectual atheist drones and someone needs to defend the minds and lifestyles of the people that have been unknowingly indoctinated by the utter garbage presented in this collection of ink and paper.

Pure ad hominem attack on Dawkins without an argument.

[Architecto]

I believe he has also successfully refuted Euthyphro's dilemma in other places. (using arguments of his own or others I am unsure)

I have not seen a successful refutation of Euthyphro's dilemma.  Can you link one?

[muonis]

Any questions or doubts regarding God's command for the genocide of the Canaanites ultimately boils down to another, much more common question:

Is the presence of evil and suffering in the world consistent with the just and loving natures of God?

We know that God is sovereign - that is, He answers to no authority and no principle except His own nature, nor can He be compelled to do anything that is against His nature. Asking if God can sin (or for that matter, if He can make a rock so heavy He can't lift it) is akin to asking if the forces of gravity can lift a rock upward from the surface of the Earth - yes, but the seemingly impossible feat would have been the result of an even stronger gravitational field that is not seen by us. Similarly, God may do something that appears to be contradictory to His nature, but ultimately, due to our understanding of the sovereignty of God (that is, no motivation other than His nature can exist for God), there necessarily exists indirect reasons that are rooted in His nature.

Having established the sovereignty of an omniscient, omnipotent God, we can see that there is no qualitative difference between God commanding genocides and God permitting genocides such as the one attempted by Hitler. Thus, this question reduces to the age-old Problem of Evil, and enough has already been written on this topic.

From a Christian perspective (and I know many in this forum are not), God is the ultimate authority because of His omnipotence, and His status as the creator of all that exists. It is conceivable, therefore, that God would have created the world according to the values and moralities that He holds - since there exists no other standard to which He would have any reason to adhere to. We can thus see that if our own ethical systems differ from the one held by God and described in His Inerrant Word, it is us who are wrong, and not God. Any actions by God, therefore, is factually morally correct and ought to be perceived as morally correct, because God is acting using the same morality to conduct all His actions as the morality He had built into the very fabric of the universe and within our own human natures. Any perceived discrepancy can be attributed to the latter being distorted, directly or indirectly, by the Fall of Man.

It must also be clarified that God is not a "fair" God, despite being a just God. The Calvinist principle of Unconditional Election makes this very clear - God does not choose His Elect based on any system comprehensible to us humans. Romans 23:3-4 reads:

[F]or all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

Saving grace is from God and God alone, and no one is any more worthy of salvation, or a long and fulfilling life for that matter, than anyone else.

Furthermore, it is written in Isaiah 45:9:

“Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker, those who are nothing but potsherds among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’ Does your work say, ‘The potter has no hands’?

It ought to be noted that these are scriptural quotations, and are non-negotiable fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. The Isaiah verse clearly precludes any argument by the dead Canaanites who come before God to be judged - what right does the clay have to complain to the potter? They do not deserve long, fulfilling lives any more than a kind and loving non-Christian deserves to enter heaven. God hands out the blessings of eternal life and justification through Christ solely at His discretion, and His application of the blessing of a long, pleasant life does not appear any less random to human eyes. This attests to the sovereignty of the Lord more than anything else.

Nor can any creation claim injustice in that it never chose to be created - a state of non-existence is not equivalent to a neutral emotional state, and and anything that may happen to any of us while on this Earth, or even being placed eternally in hell (a fate deserved by all humans, Christian or not), represents neither an improvement nor a deterioration from non-existence. Eternal salvation, on the other hand, represents a definite improvement over the aforementioned, otherwise unavoidable and fully justified fate, and that is the foundation of the Christian faith, and the proof of God's love.

[jayceeii]

Questioning God' divine judgment is not something Christians would rationally consider. It is the non theists that take the initiative to make a moral judgment on God and his perfect judgment. Remember that non theist disagree with the creator of everything. However the forget or have completely overlooked the fact that   God and his perfect judgment weren't a knee jerk reaction. God not only earned the evil doers but gave them more than a sufficient amount of time to repent and turn from their wickedness.

I love how we can relate the old testament to people and their lives today. Even though we are not under the law anymore, we can choose to ignore, or heed the warning that God had made clear to us through the Bible. If we choose to ignore it today because we do not believe the God of the Israelites is who he says he is, we can consider ourselves in the same boat as the Cannonites.

The Bible merely says, “Do not be evil.” It does not define this clearly. Instead the decision of what will be called evil was left in human hands, according to the Garden of Eden fable, which emphasized humans would demand to make themselves the measure of good and evil, ignoring God’s guidance. Were Christianity to take any further steps from the darkness in which the prophets left it, the first might to be add some reality to their statements they accept God to be the Creator. Though honoring God with their lips this way, their minds deny that God made anything in the real terms science finds.

In particular astronomy has known for a long time that it takes billions of years to form a planet and to lift a biosphere upon this planet, but the Christians persist in the absurd belief God intends to give them a new planet after they dispose of this one. Christmas is coming up, where the resources take their greatest hit of the year, that God is expected to accept as honoring His birth while His planet is ruined. The Bible did not warn men about their greatest and worst sins, which means it did not open up a route to salvation. Men don’t even rise to disobedience; God did not believe in them enough to tell the truth.