I'm not sure that's what the word 'biased' means.
Yeah, I say we just drop it.
I don't see how that's any better than saying it's okay to put people in gas chambers because in the political sphere of the dictator. The political and ethical are incommensurable.
It isn't question begging to say that the religious is evil. 'Evil' is an ethical word, so ethical people can use it regardless of any other spheres. You can say that you don't care about being moral, but that no different from a sociopath, only following the ethical when it suits them. Nevertheless, you'd still be rightfully condemned by the ethical people of the world.
A political dictator ain't God. If we think of God as anything like a mean dictator, we don't know what God means given that we don't know what "good" means as applied to him (and I'm assuming for the sake of argument, and certainly for my own personal faith, that "good" is an intrinsic element of God).
And evil arguably has ethical *and* religious definitions. Just like size has a 2d and a 3d definition. So I think question begging still applies. Trust me, you as an atheist aren't the only one really twisted by this incommensurability. But that doesn't mean there isn't a rationality for each system, including the incommensurability between these systems.
Being willing to do it is still bad. We'd be right to fear those who are willing to do what they know is wrong, because a voice in their head told them to. Maybe God even said it, but you can't know that, and even if you could know what, you should say 'Sorry, I can't do it, it is wrong'.
I don't know about that. Testing someone implies that they're able to grow beyond a point they could if they weren't tested; hence testing has a real capacity for goodness beyond not testing. Now, if the test were an actuality, I'd be right there in pointing out that this is God at his Old Testament worst, and although I think the Abraham story is good and well, there are certainly other stories where God is being just downright douchey, therefore not God at all (see the goodness element above).
Ha. I used to like some of his arguments, but I don't find the main ones he uses for God's existence to be convincing now.
I do, not so much in proving God as making room for God. His article
Philosophical and Scientific Pointers to Creatio ex Nihilo is one of the best and most packaged arguments in all of philosophy of religion I've read.
I'm not sure it is. You wouldn't ask people to read a book a year on whether fairies are real. I'm not meaning to be insulting... I just mean that I don't believe in God, and I don't see a reason to care about that much either.
Yeah, but fairies as an example implies knowing the thing you're comparing fairies to isn't real, which is question begging. A more fair example with the God debate would be: given that we can't know if God does or doesn't exist, but have fuzzy arguments for him, it's better to compare him to UFOs, which do have some interesting arguments in their favor, albeit constrained by certain limitations. Unlike fairies, nobody created UFOs (that's why we call the former fairy tales), so using something that's intentionally created isn't fair given that to assume God is created is to beg the question.
Aw, aw, thanks. You warmed my heart... keep talking.
I probably will read a theist book at some point.
You should. Just like I read mythology.
But I'm not disagreeing with God, I'm disagreeing with people who say there's a God and that it all makes sense.
I don't even know if it makes sense to say there's a timeless, spaceless mind.
I'm sure you have arguments against God that outweigh arguments for him. But that doesn't mean, given the sheer practical importance of things if God exists, that you should sponge God off the plate. People don't win against the house with a 5.26% house edge generally, but that doesn't prevent the clever gamblers from betting in clever ways given the ways in which they could get rich if they played their cards right.
For timeless and spaceless, see numbers.