pez@pyuxn.UUCP (Paul Zimmerman) (09/05/85)
Beth, I am a little shocked at the degree of abusiveness towards my position that I find in your article. It was somewhat unexpected, considering the nature of your original article about maltheism, which seems to express (misplaced) concern rather than anger. My belief that God exists and is best described as being an evil pig monster is not the same sort of ``wishful thinking'' that is engaged in by others. By the God whorshipers, who wish for a loving father and thus allow God the Evil to ``assume'' that role Himself despite His lack of qualifications or desire to fulfill that role for real. Or by the atheists, who also assume that entropy is ``just another force of nature that we can't fully explain,'' even though its behavior is certainly that of a willful evil entity, deliberately destroying the hard work of man. You say ``Why bother to build systems of excuses for entropy?'' I am doing just the opposite. I am saying that there is no ``excuse'' for entropy, that its results are certainly the actions of an evil Damager-God. People seem to have forgotten why He is referred to as the Damager-God. Since He refers to Himself as ``Creator,'' when all He really does is damage, a title other than ``Creator'' is appropriate. You fall for the big lie, Beth, when you deny that the doings of Christianity since its inception (including the Inquistion and other evil things like it) are the will of God. They occured with His blessing, didn't they? They continued unimpeded by any intervention of ``good.'' What makes you think God and His son weren't deceiving you all along? The evidence is still in favor of this over and above believing the opposite. When you say ``Sarah was in her eighties,'' you forget how the Bible seems very flippant when it comes to keeping time. Adam is credited with living 930 years! By whatever scale that was really intended to be, ``in her eighties'' wouldn't seem extraordinary at all. You make the Bible sound like an issue of the ``Star'' or the ``World Weekly News,'' with headlines about women giving birth in old age. (Or parthenogenetically!) And, as a matter of fact, that's exactly the degree of reliability we can reasonably grant to it when it attributes good things to God. When you say (I paraphrase) ``if we cannot believe the good, then we cannot believe the evil either,'' you are missing the point, Beth. You're right when you say ``God might just be claiming responsibility for any old thing because he wants to impress us with His power.'' This is quite possibly true in some cases. But we know something heinous and horrific happened at the Dead Sea, the site of Sodom and Gomorrah. We know there was some sort of flood that virtually wiped out life on Earth. What was it that did all these things? Entropy? Or some heinous willful force? Another thing, Beth. You fail to distinguish the difference between the natural forces you describe. Rain is a natural event, necessary for life, useful for man in agricultural and other endeavors. Hurricanes are not. Birth is a natural event in the course of life. Death occurs as a result of decay, of entropy. Why are hurricanes and death and decay clearly different from normal natural forces? They are the products of an obvious willful force working AGAINST nature! The God whorshipers claim that it is these entropic things that are part of the natural flow, while the good is the deliberate doing of a loving God. I claim the opposite, because ``good'' is better described by natural flowing forces than the apparent whim of evil could be. (You have to work to build something good for yourself. Evil just happens by itself, destroying things AS IF IT HAD A WILL OF ITS OWN!) Which of us do you believe, and why? I find it sort of strange that you choose to name only ``evil'' examples of men's doings (Son of Sam, Hitler, and Jim Jones). There really is a fine human tendency to build things that a Damager-God seeks to eradicate, despite your casual dismissal of this. Look at the Tower of Babel for the earliest example. In doing this, you seem to have fallen for another of God's big lies: ``It is you who is evil, I am the ultimate good, anything I do is good!'' Man is surely not evil, and those men who do evil do it as the will of God, as His agents wreaking havoc over the Earth for His pleasure. Of course, He blames Satan for this, but recognize He and Satan are one and the same. When you speak of ``humans willfully interfering and damaging the natural flow of nature,'' you are speaking of humans who are followers of the will of God. It would seem rather self-centered of you to deny ``Murphy's Law,'' something most all of us have experienced. I say self-centered because you speak as if you were the only one God was out to damage. If it hasn't rained in some time even though you don't carry an umbrella, could someone else be suffering for it? Like farmers? Do you wonder why the sudden shortage of water all over the world? Is this a prelude to God's invitation to us all to join Him at Armageddon for His rapture of death? What's that closing line Rosen uses? ``Many things are possible, but few things actually happen?'' (My apologies, Rich, if I've gotten this wrong.) Beth, when you say ``a billion things could have just gone wrong,'' you are missing the point. God can choose whatever He likes to ``go wrong'' at any given time. Some small portion of it, a lot of it---perhaps to one particular person like Job), or all of it---which coincides with His ultimate ``prediction'' and plan for Armageddon. There are apparently (at least) three sets of assumptions you could make. You could say, Beth, that there simply is no God, that the imbalance between the ``good'' natural forces of nature and the ``evil'' destructive forces of entropy is ``just the way things are.'' (``It's easier to destroy things than to build them up.'') Or you can believe as the God whorshipers do, that the good forces, which seem best explained in terms of a mechanistic natural flow, are represented by the will of a loving God, while evil is represented either by an opposite force to God (Satan) or ``just the way things are.'' Or, finally, you can believe that the mechanistic natural flow of ``good'' really is ``the way things are,'' while the apparent whimsical interfering destructive forces of entropic evil are in fact the will of an evil Damager-God. Which do you choose? Your life may depend on the choice you make. Be well, -- Paul Zimmerman - AT&T Bell Laboratories pyuxn!pez
jho@ihu1m.UUCP (Yosi Hoshen) (09/07/85)
Paul Zimmerman in recent article has been using the term entropy in presening his case against god. It is quite clear that Paul does not understand this term. The following are some example of his ludicrous claims: > Or by the atheists, who also assume > that entropy is ``just another force of nature that we can't fully > explain,'' even though its behavior is certainly that of a willful > evil entity, deliberately destroying the hard work of man. You say > ``Why bother to build systems of excuses for entropy?'' I am doing > just the opposite. I am saying that there is no ``excuse'' for entropy, > that its results are certainly the actions of an evil Damager-God. > > We know there > was some sort of flood that virtually wiped out life on Earth. What > was it that did all these things? Entropy? Or some heinous willful force? > > Death occurs as a > result of decay, of entropy. Why are hurricanes and death and decay clearly > different from normal natural forces? They are the products of an obvious > willful force working AGAINST nature! The God whorshipers claim that it is > these entropic things that are part of the natural flow, while the good > > that the > imbalance between the ``good'' natural forces of nature and the ``evil'' > destructive forces of entropy is ``just the way things are.'' (``It's > easier to destroy things than to build them up.'') Paul, I suggest that you do some studying in thermodynamics and in statistical thermodynamics, before using entropy as a buzzword for evil. If you don't know of any good book on this subject, I will be happy to recommand one in email. -- Yosi Hoshen, AT&T Bell Laboratories Naperville, Illinois, Mail: ihnp4!ihu1m!jho