"Allen Whittaker" wrote in message
...
And if a deity is planting false evidence what is he hiding. It also
doesn't
set a very good example to those that follow him.

Like Socrates points out Gods can only do the good things and that the bad
things are man made because Gods would not do harm to mortals. He was
trying
to prove that stories about Gods doing wrong were false truths.

Allen


Here you have confounded the concept of the creator of the Universe with the
ultimate moral standard. That's only really only true in a few religions -
even Christianinty has a devil. The 30 billion Gods in the Hindu pantheon
appear to have the moral leadership of reality show contestants, and have no
problems routinely blighting the lives of Indian peasants.

However, the argument against a God being untruthful is far more compelling.
It means we cannot be sure of internal consistency. If God can make all the
photons in the Universe appear in one blink, he can make them all disappear
in the next blink. What's the point of building observatories, if this is
the case?

And for those who have enjoyed this thread (as I certainly have) may I
recommend an SF author Greg Egan. He has explored many similar themes. One
of his better is "Permutation City", where the premise is that human
personalities are stored inside computers. This has been done before and
since, but its an excellent treatment, particularly if you have some
interest in computer science (eg Turing machines). Many other books have
have a mathematical slant, and he knows what he is talking about, and he
turns these ideas into rip-roaring SF yarns.




"Llanzlan Klazmon" wrote in message
7.6...
wrote in
om:

wrote in message
... [snip]
If you posit an infinitely powerful god, he could blink the stars,
light, and dinosaur bones into existence at any time with any
characteristics he chooses.

So no, there is no possible argument other than such a being doesn't
exist or this god wouldn't do that, so you are back to belief.

This is generically known as "last Thursdayism" and has another more
official name of "Omphalism" that gets its name from a fancy term for
belly button.

It's an insidious notion. If you posit that the evidence of age
could have been created rather than actually grown that way through
the time it appears to have done, then you have a problem. How do
you know *you* existed last Thursday? Or yesterday? Or a half hour
ago? You *could* have been created with all those memories exactly
correct to make you *think* you existed in the past. If a deity could
and would fake such things as huge quantities of fossils, diverse
genetic information, etc. etc., then why couldn't such a deity fake
your own memory?

In fact, you don't even have to be continuous. Maybe it's easier for
a deity to let you exist on every alternate second leap year, and let
other entities have existence on some kind of time share. So, you
might exist for a second, then not exist for a few years, then exist
again for a second with only the memory of the years in between. How
would you ever possibly know? If an entity exists with the ability to
create light from stars that *APPEARS* billions of years old, and to
do so effectively instantly, why shouldn't such an entity be able to
create you with the memory of having existed a half hour ago?

The only real answer to such notions is: They don't belong in science
because they are not applicable to the jobs and tasks of science.
Because there isn't really any way to predict anything from them,
or test them. If you posit an arbitrarily powerful entity that can
do such tricks, then as long as that entity chooses not to let us
know about him, (or remember knowing about him) then there's not a
damn thing we can ever do with the notion.
Socks


Yes. Another problem with the appearance of age/omphalism type of
argument is that it implies that the deity is being deliberately
deceitful - i.e planting false evidence.

LK.