Replies

While I do believe in an omniscient and omnipotent god, realizing that you've created something that will doom your own creation, is something that can easily be discerned. And of course remedying that problem is perhaps just as easy for this supreme being that created everything.

The statements that it can easily be discerned and that the supreme being would bother to remedy it if it did discern it are a pair of presumed conclusions. Even if there is a creator it is entirely likely that in the universe as a whole human beings are a totally insignificant and irrelevant accident as far as the creator is concerned.

...a god would care about his creation in much the same way a biologist would care about a new strain of microscopic organism. If some third party were to enter the laboratory with the sole purpose of overturning the petri dish, the biologist would stop this third party.

In this case your extension of my analogy works against you. The experiment (life on earth/the petri dish) may be already completed and the interesting results are noted. The scientist/God turns away and doesn't care as the cleaner/devil holds the dish of believers up to the flames. Perhaps the dish containing believers makes a pretty colour in the bunsen whereas the non-believers aren't so interesting and just get tossed in the trash. The point I am making here is that the motivation of supernatural beings might well be completely inscrutable to us (I would expect them to be inscrutable, you don't). The burning bacteria screaming in what seems like eternal pain wouldn't understand the cleaner's motivation, or why their creator was no longer interested.

"The statements that it can easily be discerned and that the supreme being would bother to remedy it if it did discern it are a pair of presumed conclusions. Even if there is a creator it is entirely likely that in the universe as a whole human beings are a totally insignificant and irrelevant accident as far as the creator is concerned."

And yet you presume that the Creator would not care. Once again, we will have to agree to differ, I see that even if it is an accident, that the Creator would treat us with care, and you presume that he would not.

"In this case your extension of my analogy works against you. The experiment (life on earth/the petri dish) may be already completed and the interesting results are noted. The scientist/God turns away and doesn't care as the cleaner/devil holds the dish of believers up to the flames. Perhaps the dish containing believers makes a pretty colour in the bunsen whereas the non-believers aren't so interesting and just get tossed in the trash. The point I am making here is that the motivation of supernatural beings might well be completely inscrutable to us (I would expect them to be inscrutable, you don't). The burning bacteria screaming in what seems like eternal pain wouldn't understand the cleaner's motivation, or why their creator was no longer interested."

Your entire argument lies in metaphor whereas mine lies in logic (i.e. post #126). By this analogy, you admit the existence of a god, and therefore are doomed with the rest of us anyway (if your analogy is true).

Let's extend the analogy some more: If the creator is omnipotent, as you are now indicating, why would he need a cleaner? He would not need one. He could merely create another for his next in a series of never ending experiments.

Sorry for waiting so long to repost. I've been playing a new computer game, and have otherwise been working the rest of the time.