{"id":5085,"date":"2010-02-22T13:07:35","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T05:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/?p=5085"},"modified":"2010-02-22T13:21:08","modified_gmt":"2010-02-22T05:21:08","slug":"cold-darkness-poor-reasoning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/2010\/02\/cold-darkness-poor-reasoning\/","title":{"rendered":"Cold, Darkness &#038; Poor Reasoning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><object classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" width=\"320\" height=\"265\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/x0r6qymvopw&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;rel=0\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><embed type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"320\" height=\"265\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/x0r6qymvopw&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;rel=0\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The truthful are truthful, whether they believe in God or not.<br \/>\nThe good are good, whether they believe in God or not.<br \/>\nTruth and goodness is truthful and good, whether one believes in God or not.<br \/>\nAs such, belief in God is of arbitrary importance.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Stonepeace<\/p>\n<p>A good theist respects a good atheist.<br \/>\nA good atheist respects a good theist.<br \/>\nIf not, what good is theism or atheism?<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Stonepeace<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">This is a video version of something that circulated by email years ago. <\/span><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">It&#8217;s  certain that Einstein never said what he was supposed to had in the video for he did not believe in a  personal God and was widely regarded as dull-witted in school when young.<\/span> <span style=\"color: #800000;\">This post is not anti any religion, but a simple philosophical exercise to stimulate personal reflection. It might seem logical at first but the reasoning in this very short video is flawed in many ways, as we shall see:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>1.<\/strong> If there is a creator God, who created everything, not that there  is a need for one at all (as nature can exist as it is by itself, recreating itself in natural cycles), he created the possibility of evil, cold  and darkness too. Even if he did not, he allows it to exist as the  other end of the spectrum. In this sense, he did created and sustains evil, cold and darkness.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2. <\/strong>To say evil, cold and darkness do not exist is ridiculous &#8211; especially  to those who suffer greatly from evil-doers, who almost freeze to death and  who are discriminated for being blind.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3. <\/strong>What the video shows indirectly, is that a God that  is perfectly good who created everything cannot exist &#8211; because if  he does, he would have created a world without evil, cold and darkness. And  if there is  really a creator God, it is true then, that he is evil.<\/p>\n<p><strong>4. <\/strong> To say that evil is a result of absence of God&#8217;s love in the heart is  problematic too because it is saying that all who don&#8217;t believe in God are evil. This  is obviously not the case as there are millions of good people who  don&#8217;t believe in God, many of whom love more  sentient beings (including animals) than the average God-believer, who believes animals are created by God for  them to eat. It is also a problem why an all-loving God&#8217;s love should  possibly be absent from anyone&#8217;s heart in the first place &#8211; unless  there is no such God in the first place.<\/p>\n<p><strong>5. <\/strong>The video is about bringing religion back to school as a science when creationism is simply bad science according to most scientists. &#8216;The U.S. National Science Teachers  Association and the American  Association for the Advancement of Science have termed it pseudoscience.<sup id=\"cite_ref-NSTA_2005_17-0\"><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Intelligent_design#cite_note-NSTA_2005-17\"> <\/a><\/sup>Others in the scientific community have concurred, and some have called  it junk science.&#8221; &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Intelligent_design\" target=\"_blank\">Wikipedia<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Intelligent_design\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;He who has eyes can see the sickening sight;<br \/>\nWhy does not Brahma [equivalent to creator God idea] set  his creatures right?<br \/>\nIf his wide power no limit can restrain,<br \/>\nWhy  is his hand so rarely spread to bless?<br \/>\nWhy are all his creatures  condemned to pain?<br \/>\nWhy does he not to all give happiness?<br \/>\nWhy do  fraud, lies, and ignorance prevail?<br \/>\nWhy triumphs falsehood &#8212; truth  and justice fail?<br \/>\nI count your Brahma one the unjust among<br \/>\nWho  made a world in which to shelter wrong.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8211; Bhuridatta Jataka, No.  453<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If there exists some lord all-powerful to fulfill<br \/>\nIn  every creature bliss or woe, and action good or ill,<br \/>\nThat Lord is  stained with sin.<br \/>\nThe human being does but work his will.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8212;  Mahabodhi Jataka, No. 528<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The truthful are truthful, whether they believe in God or not. The good are good, whether they believe in God&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,74],"tags":[198,244,426,45,107,156],"class_list":["post-5085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mix","category-veganism","tag-evil","tag-god","tag-goodness","tag-stonepeace","tag-truth","tag-veganism-vegetarianism","wpcat-1-id","wpcat-74-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5085\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}