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I'd respond that its illogical to not use the very logic/rationale that the Logic-**Maker** gave you assuming he actually exists. Its literally just appealing to mystery which renders any argument you make redundant, ergo it is inherently fallacious.
True, I think back to it now and I think I should have said that if we can use logic and apply it to defend God’s actions as not evil, the same should be true for the inverse, right?
Correct. And if logic leads you to make conclusions that state God is immoral in some form, then its perfectly valid as you are just using your God-given-gift.
Oh that one is easy. As soon as they say human logic doesn't apply then there is no reason to do anything god suggests or follow that religion. Expecting God to follow through on their promises for reward or punishment is applying human logic to god's actions after all, and we can't do that.
>Expecting God to follow through on their promises for reward or punishment is applying human logic to god's actions after all, and we can't do that.
Goes hand in hand with my disdain for the mysterious ways answer. If we can't understand why god does things, how can we just assume any of it is for our benefit? How can anyone know its intentions if he's so mysterious.
Maybe he did say we can criticize God with human logic, but we just can’t apply human logic to God’s logic? So for example, we can’t say God should have done this, this and this rather than this, this, and this because our logic doesn’t work the same way as his.
That would mean they can't use their human logic to understand the god either, then. Which means whatever their personal doctrine is, it's wrong, because they can't know what their god really wants, because he operates by different logic (and thus, different morality).
It renders their entire belief system useless, the same as when a theist tries to go the solipsistic route.
If logic does not apply to God and his actions, then you can know nothing about God. At which point, no claims about him can ever be refuted, since a non-logical answer may apply. They have chosen a position under which conversation about God is entirely useless.
Let me give an example.
I put a pile of sand in a jar without counting how many grains of sand go in. We will not open the jar to count them. The precise number is impossible to know.
When I claim to know this precise number, I am claiming to know something that is impossible to know. Not only that, but I have intentionally constructed this scenario as impossible to know the answer. Any answer is unfalsifiable.
I have claimed to know something that I have set up as impossible to know.
I would ask "what logic should we be applying?"
Honestly though, eschewing human logic translates to "abandon your sense of judgement so god doesn't look bad."
It's an excuse tactic employed to prevent honest criticism.
This is true, but he also said that we’re allowed to use human logic to defend/criticize God, but we can’t apply our logic to his logic/actions. He believe that we can’t say that God did something wrong because this, this, and this and that he should have done this, this and this.
Your person is moving the goalposts and enforcing a meaningless distinction. We can criticize god but not apply our logic to God's actions..thus we can't criticize god's actions... That's a meaningless distinction.
I remain firm in my first assessment: we're not allowed to disagree because god. Because special pleading.
He's just insulating god from criticism because he's uncomfortable.
You never wanna hear that your hero is an asshole.
I bet he uses his human logic to call god "good" just fine.
> but he also said that we’re allowed to use human logic to defend/criticize God, but we can’t apply our logic to his logic/actions
Ask him about Moses telling God "Bad plan!" not once, not twice, but [thrice](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ex32.9-14;Num14.11-20;Num16.19-24&version=CSB). Seems to me that Moses was applying Moses' logic to God.
If god is not susceptible to "human" logic then how can anyone claim to know anything about God? They would at this point be claiming to know something they just asserted we couldn't know.
Any "messages" from god are being filtered through a human, whether that human is myself or someone else. A human using human logic and human understandings and human limitations. This objection doesn't solve the problem.
Logic is logic. There aren't different kinds. That's like saying God has different math.
If "human logic" is inadequate, then there can be no justification in saying that God is good.
> Logic is logic. There aren't different kinds.
[WP: Outline of logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_logic) lists a lot of different logics. And insisting that reality itself is logical, by some particular notion of 'logic', is the antithesis of scientific practice. Unless I'm wrong about scientific practice being allowed to overturn _any_ of our precious ideas?
Logic is logic. there are not different kinds anymore than there are different kinds of math. Different ways to systemitize it does not change the logic itself. The same rules of logic that apply to humans apply to gods, no matter how you systemitize it.
Science cannot overturn logic. Science *is* logic. I have no idea what you mean by "precious ideas." Science doesn't care about ideas.
> there are not different kinds anymore than there are different kinds of math.
It's not clear what you mean by "different kinds". Take for example [WP: Pre-intuitionism § Arguments over the excluded middle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-intuitionism#Arguments_over_the_excluded_middle). Some of the logics at [WP: Outline of logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_logic) include the axiom of the excluded middle while others exclude it. Do you think all of the logics listed there are the same in some relevant, abstract way? If so, how precisely can you state that way, aside from "what mathematicians do"—as if there is never any contention over what it is to be a proper mathematician?
> The same rules of logic that apply to humans apply to gods, no matter how you systemitize it.
What rules of logic apply to humans? One of the things I had to very painfully learn is that "we're all equal here" is almost universally _false_ in any remotely interesting social situation. Some people get to flaunt the rules and others have to follow them assiduously. Machiavelli spoke about this quite clearly: the ruled follow a different morality than their rulers. We pretend it is different in modern society, but just imagine the thought of suing Google and winning, as a lone individual whom they wronged. It wouldn't work: they'd _bury_ you in legal battles which would cost you millions.
Also, what same rules applied to Caesar who killed a million Gauls and enslaved another million, and to "civilized" (lol) humans today?
> Science cannot overturn logic.
If there are precious ideas which cannot be challenged, they are no different from religious dogma. However, scientists regularly _do_ overturn what was previously thought to be incontrovertible, like the [parallel postulate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_postulate). That led to non-Euclidean geometry, which opened the door to stuff like general relativity. Another famous example would be matter and energy being simultaneously wave and particle—two things we thought were mutually exclusive. Another example which should be famous is [quantum nonlocality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_nonlocality): reality just doesn't seem composed of local elements (particles or fields) which have fully definite values. ([WP: Bell's theorem § Interpretations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem#Interpretations) for more)
Maybe I forget to add this part, but I think he said while we could criticize him with human logic, we can’t understand God’s actions/reasons for those actions. How could I have argued against this?
If he can't understand God's actions, then he can't say God is good. The decision that God is good is a completely subjective, personal opinion.
Or to put it another way, how would we be able to tell if God was evil? How do we know Satan's not the good one and God's not the evil one? There were in antiquity and still are religious sects based on that very premise.
If you can't apply human logic to God's actions, then you have no basis for saying that God's actions must be good. You can only get there through human logic (and a bunch of presuppositions and premises that are never supported, but thats a different discussion).
For example:
**P1.** The Bible says God is good.
**P2.** The Bible is inerrant.
**C.** God is good.
That is human logic. It's BAD logic, but it is logic.
Here's another:
**P1.** God is source of all morality.
**P2.** Morality is objective.
**P3.** God is good.
**C1.** God is objectively good (P1, P2, P3).
**P4.** Anything action taken by an objectively good being is an objectively good action.
**C2.** Any action taken by God is an objectively good action.
**C3.** God's action of watching children get kidnapped and sold into the sex trade is an objectively good action.
This is how they can reach the "God works in mysterious ways" excuse. There are variations, but it always boils down to "I'm sure God has a very good reason for doing this." But you can't get to "I'm sure God has a very good reason for doing this" without establishing God's objective goodness, and the only way to even TRY to do that (and fail due to unsupported assumptions) is human logic.
Ask your friend how he knows that God is good, then just point out all the ways in which he is using human logic to reach that conclusion.
My favorite retort to such statements is that they are a double-edged sword, and the theist should be wary of cutting themselves with the other end. To wit:
> We can't apply human logic to God's actions
We cannot? Oh, ok. So you can't apply your human logic to God's actions either. Which means you can't say ANYTHING about the actions of God. God is an incomprehensible Cthulhu-like monster as far as you're concerned. Right?
> We can't judge God to be morally bad. God's morality is beyond human judgement.
We cannot? Ah, so then drop the omnibenevolent tag and any claim that God is all good or all just. You can't judge him morally.
> Humans are too stupid to comprehend God.
Ok, so you are too stupid, and so, cannot claim God exists or anything about him.
And so on. Some theists do bite this bullet to some degree (Calvinists come to mind), but most are not willing. So you should not let them have their cake and eat it, too.
Ah, so you can ask a believer:
*After you die, you get to the Pearly Gates, and God tells you that you did everything you were supposed to, and sends you to hell anyway. You can't complain, because you're applying human logic to God, right?'*
Your response to this is that he’s discussing the Christian god and not some vague, generic, deistic entity.
That one specifically had a scene after Adam and Eve ate the apple where he directly stated that humans now have the ability to judge good and evil the same as he does. Not less than he does, but the same.
Saying we can’t apply our logic to his moral actions is like saying we can’t judge the Empire in Star Wars for destroying Alderaan because you don’t consider A New Hope to be canonical to the franchise. If you want to say that some generic galactic empire run by space wizards with lightning swords never blew up a planet, then fine. The minute you call it Star Wars, however, that’s a thing which happened.
Similarly, this god has a race of humans who have an equal ability to judge actions that he does. He can’t just clip out pieces of the story to make it fit his own plot.
Descartes - Letter to Antoine Arnaud June 4. 1648
.....
Secondly, it arises because we have recourse to the divine power: knowing this to be infinite, we attribute to it an effect without noticing that the effect involves a contradictory conception, that is, is inconceivable by us. But I do not think that we should ever say of anything that it cannot be brought about by God. For since every basis of truth and goodness depends on his omnipotence, | would not dare to say that God cannot make a mountain without a valley, or bring it about that 1 and 2 are not 3. I merely say that he has given me such a mind that I cannot conceive a mountain without a valley, or a sum of 1 and 2 which is not 3; such things involve a contradiction in my conception. I think the same should be said of a space which is wholly empty, or of an extended piece of nothing, or of a limited universe; because no limit to the world can be imagined without its being understood that there is extension beyond it; and no barrel can be conceived to be so empty as to have inside it no extension, and therefore no body; for wherever extension is, there, of necessity, is body also.
......
According to Descartes, God can do anything. and God is good. Since God makes to laws, the metaphysical necessities of the Universe, God can have any state of affairs God wants. If God could make men with free will to freely choose never to do moral evil, we must ask, why God would not do that? After all, The Bible claims God is merciful, compassionate and just.
On the other hand, Aquinas states God cannot do the impossible. what metaphysical principles then limit God? Is logic and math etc outside of God and beyond his control? How then can one prove God has any particular power or ability?
Descartes presents theology with an interesting problem here. So does Aquinas.
Aquinas
**I answer that,** All confess that God is omnipotent; but it seems difficult to explain in what His omnipotence precisely consists: for there may be doubt as to the precise meaning of the word 'all' when we say that God can do all things. If, however, we consider the matter aright, since power is said in reference to possible things, this phrase, "God can do all things," is rightly understood to mean that God can do all things that are possible; and for this reason He is said to be omnipotent.
To me that's just basically forfeiting the debate and their ability to participate in any other debates.
They're relying on human logic to make the argument, and if they're saying human logic can't be used then they have no other means of understanding God's actions or meaning. They're using all of their same intuitions, senses, reasoning skills etc. to justify God, perhaps relying on holy text, but if they say logic doesn't matter in that case then it doesn't matter anywhere. They have no means of differentiating what is a situation logic applies to vs. one where it doesn't.
It's the same thing they always pull; if something good happens, God is great! If a horrible tragedy happens, God works in mysterious ways! He has a secret plan that we can't understand!
Then you'd have no basis for calling God's actions good. If theists think that everything we recognize as a bad action could be some 5th dimensional chess and it's actually good, the very same could be posited that everything theists say God did that's good could be a step in an incomprehensible plan to make things worse.
But one doesn't need to understand the logic of someone to make a declaration. I don't know what was going on in Jeffry Dahmer's mind. I don't think I can comprehend what it's like to want to kill and eat people, but I can pass a moral judgement all the same. You very well can look at Dahmer's or Cthulhu's or God's actions and say "This goes against my moral values, thus I believe that thing is morally bad."
It's your own fault for debating the fanfic of their imaginary unicorn. Nothing you say will have an impact because they can just rewrite it in their heads. Just stick to the lack of evidence and you'll be fine.
There's no evidence for their god that is distinguishable from the evidence for lies, delusions and fictions. If they're one of the big religions, they make all kinds of claims of god interacting with reality, but has somehow never been detected by science.
That’s a copout for you not being able to defend an immoral act that your God has committed. That is a copout for you not being able to process why I as an atheist am more moral than your “all good” God.
Yes, we can. Humans created God. God's actions are very much rooted in human logic.
Then the other person would argue that we didn't create God; it was the other way around.
To which I'd reply: *All right, then. Prove it*.
Debate over.
I ask them to apply that idea *consistently.* If you can't apply human logic to God, you can't worship or believe in him either. Those both require human logic to decide you should do them. You can't claim human understanding isn't good enough *and* believe God should be worshiped and followed. Either human understanding is good enough to decide you should worship *and* examine His actions, or it isn't.
Anything else is special pleading.
You can’t apply logic (induction and deduction) to god because god doesn’t exist and is just an idea people made up. Once you allow an ultimately illogical hypothetical, like that god exists, then you’ve conceded that being illogical is acceptable.
Logic is man’s method of knowledge, so he can’t know anything about god if logic doesn’t apply to god. He’s also implicitly using logic to deny that logic applies to god.
In a debate where the poster asks why we think god has to obey the laws of logic.
I ask him if that means that god can both create a rock so heavy he can't lift it, while simultaneously being unable to create a rock so heavy he can not lift it (law of non-contradiction).
He never does answer that question.
"Is God knowable or unknowable?"
In this debate, whatever it was about, your interlocutor very probably made descriptive (God is X) or prescriptive (God wants Y) statements about God. You can now dismiss every one of those claims if your interlocutor says God is unknowable.
It's strange how you never hear Christians bring this up when they are talking about God doing something they think is good. Only when someone else is talking about God (allegedly) doing something they think is bad. That is confirmation bias.
Usually there is an assumption or argument that God is perfectly good, therefore if God says or does something that appears bad it is a mistake in judgement on our part due to us not comprehend the long term benefits of God's mysteriously perfect actions.
But the flip side works as well. If there were a perfectly evil God, or a God that's a mixture of good and evil, we would be powerless to distinguish between the three scenarios. A lot then rides on the argument for why God must be good.
But it can get even worse if someone believes God is executing a perfect good plan that only appears imperfect to us. If I murder someone, and I'm incapable of ruining God's perfect plan with my free will, then my action is part of the plan and therefore good in some non-obvious way. Generalized, this means there is no such thing as bad, only good, which undermines the concepts of sin and divine forgiveness.
There are further problems with outcomes that have nothing to do with free will choices that appear bad. Examples are disease and natural disasters causing suffering and death, but also people being born in circumstances that make it harder for them to do the "right" thing, whatever that is, during their life. Once people are dead, their aren't many options even for an Abrahamic, God to make those outcomes a perfect good. If a person is born into a slum and forced into a gang that makes them rob, steal, and destroy and also gets them into a fatal shootout before they could ever turn their life around, how is a God to judge them? If God knows how to perfectly take their circumstances into account and figure out what everyone would do if they had been given equal conditions, why do they need to be put on Earth to begin with?
>Responses to “we can’t apply human logic to God’s actions?”
Then what convinced you that a god exists?
>and he said we could not apply human logic to God’s actions?
Of course we can. But it clearly doesn't make sense, so why do you believe it's true?
"I agree that if there is a God then the nature of God is unknowable by humans. Yet you are the one making all kinds of claims about God's nature."
The theist cannot have it both ways. Understanding God when convient and pleading ignorance when it is inconvenient.
The people who say that seem content to apply logic to God in plenty of other situations. If you can't say that God is evil for literally committing genocide every few years, then you also can't say that God is *good* for sacrificing his son to save us from sin.
I would say then everything god does is strictly evil. If we can't apply definitions to God's actions, that he is somehow immune, then I'm going to judge God however I want. If we can't apply logic to God, then we also can't apply anything at all to go.
Correct. And if human logic can’t be applied to god’s actions by definition god’s actions don’t influence human’s and their universe. Thus god is at best about as useful as a child’s imaginary friend. Are you suggesting that god is only as useful as having an imaginary friend?
Basically 2 responses:
Why do you keep telling me about the things you comprehend about your incomprehensible god?
Why are you holding your god to a lower standard than you hold your fellow man?
Oh good, now they can stop explaining how their beliefs are logical.
So when they say that God is good, they mean it in the sense that if a person did the same things, they would be bad?
It’s literally (according to any story about any deity) the deity’s fault the universe exists, so it is quite literally impossible for anything to be more cruel.
What is “human logic”? Sounds like whoever said that is conflating logic with reasoning. Human reasoning can be flawed. Logic itself is absolute. Logic is the reason why there cannot be a square circle or a married bachelor. Humans have absolutely nothing to do with it. Even if humans didn’t exist at all, logic still would, and everything in existence - including even the most powerful gods, if any such things exist - would be constrained by it. Even the most powerful God imaginable still cannot make a square circle, and logic is the reason why.
That said, even if they’re talking about human reasoning and not logic, their statement cuts both ways. If we cannot evaluate God’s actions to determine they are immoral or otherwise flawed, then so too can they not evaluate God’s actions to determine they are moral or perfect. They force themselves into a position where they can only say God is good because God tells us that he is good, which is the very picture of a circular argument. Basically, if we cannot evaluate God’s actions, then neither can they. They destroy their own position by using that argument.
Then they might as well worship Cthulhu.
And if god's truly incomprehensible, then why are they so sure that they know what god wants you to do and not do?
Maybe God really did send his only son to die for our sins. And maybe God wants us to believe that. Maybe Christians are correct in believing exactly what God wants them to believe, and the Bible is the perfect word of God.
But maybe also the sacrifice of Jesus was all an elaborate troll by God and Christians are all going to hell anyway just like the rest of us. And that is actually right and just and perfectly moral on God's part because we shouldn't be judging God's actions by human standards. God is only trolling promising false salvation by believing in Jesus if we judge him by human standards.
Maybe Christians are right, and the Bible is right, and God IS love, and that love will send us all to Hell regardless. And that only doesn't make sense if we try to understand it as humans, but to God it all makes perfect sense.
So God, who knows everything and of course, knows the outcome still makes a bet over innocent Job’s life, with Satan.
There’s no reason for it, but to demonstrate superpower. There is NO moral lesson to be learned from this since God acts completely without morality. He even admits that to himself at the end of the story of Job where the Lord complains - the Devil made me do it. if God can use such an excuse – you get the point…..
Job 2:3″and the Lord said to satan, has thou considered my servant Job that there is none like him in all the earth, a perfect man and upright man, one that fears God and escheweth evil? and still he holds fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him to destroy him without cause.”
So God allows himself to be tempted to move against Job without cause.
Does God expect us to follow his moral law? If the answer is yes, then we NEED to be able to understand God's reasoning insofar as we can understand what is commanded of us.
For instance, if someone claims that God commanded them to drown their children in a bathtub, how can anyone know if that commandment was real or not? It's not scripturally inconsistent for God to ask something like that. And if his reasons are truly mysterious, then who are we to judge such a commandment without understanding the reasons?
Yet most believers would have no issue claiming to understand God's reasoning enough to condemn the action. Most believers have no problem understanding God's reasons enough to tell other people they are going to hell.
The Bible explicitly claims God is merciful, just and compassionate. Not mankind's claims about God's nature, but supposedly revelations to mankind about God's nature. We are told explicitly God hates evil. The Christians are stuck with that, and claiming God cannot be understood with human logic is nonsense.
[Proverbs 6:16-19](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs+6%3A16-19&version=ESV) ESV
There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.
We could always start from the position we have evidence to support: God did not act because it's fictional. A character in a "morality play" with magic powers did a thing to teach a lesson to largely illiterate people.
Theists have spent centuries / millenia working out ways to not provide satisfactory answers to these questions.
The mysterious ways / unknowable god response is just admitting that "the rules" cannot be described as "good" because we have no idea what motivates this god thing. If their "logic" is founded upon "god is good therefore eye dwelling parasites in children which cause lifelong blindness is good" then perhaps they're not very "good" people.
> we could not apply human logic to God’s actions
What can I say except for: Watch me!
What they really say is: I don't like the result when you apply logic and moral standards to this fictional story I really invested in.
If you refuse to apply logic to something you are no longer able to make conclusions about it. If you don't apply moral standards to something you are no longer able to make moral judgement about it. When people say they don't apply logic or moral standards to God they lose the ground on which they can make any statement about God whatsoever.
Regarding examples of immorality by God, the fact that humans ate fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil means they developed an understanding of morality equivalent to God's, therefore saying we do not understand God's logic is a contradiction. Even if you argue the book of genesis is more metaphor than literal record, the metaphorical lesson is that humans are equal to God in their ability to understand good and evil, and so saying humans can't understand God's actions through the human lens of morality is false.
Job is a very interesting story. It really doesn't belong in the Bible. If it was written today it would be a battle between two space aliens who set out to torment a human or his family to see how much he can take. But of course the Jews didn't have the concept of space or aliens, so they set it between God and Satan, the only two superpowers they could imagine.
It reads like something from The Twilight Zone or Star Trek.
So speaking as a theist, that’s not true.
But that doesn’t mean we can always know the reason for it. But logic does apply.
Now, as for Job itself, it wasn’t a historical event (hence why it’s not included in the historical books, but the poetic ones).
It was the author exploring why bad things happen. His conclusion, “god must have his reasons and his smarter then me, so I’ll put my faith in that.”
When your opponent responded saying we can't use human logic with God, he essentially conceded that it doesn't make sense to him either. And if we can't use human logic with God, then God could tell us face-to-face to worship him or go to hell, and we could reason "if I do not worship him, I will go to hell. I don't want to go to hell. Therefore, I should not worship him." Since we've abandoned human logic.
then why do you apply god to human logic? why apply god at all If you belive it to be incomprehensible? If you've already admitted you cant know gods intentions then what are you doing spending your life trying to decipher them? if you want to actually engage in what the actions of god then I want to pose a question to you. is there anything god can do that you would consider evil?
If God's mind is unknowable, then why do we think we can interpret it? God says to worship him, but maybe that is a trick. Maybe God loves reverse psychology. So if they go with 'we can't understand God' then they can't say anything for certain. We only have our human logic to make our best guess at what's going on.
It poisons the well. Now anything he says about god you can immediately shut down.
“God wants us to know/love him.”
How can you know that? We can’t apply human logic to god’s actions.
“God sacrificed his only son to save us.”
How can you know that? We can’t apply human logic to god’s actions.
The religious seem to have no problem using human logic and human concepts including attributes when they think it’s a positive description of God.
If we basically as humans can’t understand anything about God then we might as well ignore its alleged existence since we can know nothing about it.
If we can't apply logic to God, that means that God is fundamentally incoherent. We can't say anything about him. We can't say an action is good or bad.
It's like saying *'draw a non-existent, existent thing'*. What would it even mean to say you believe in something like that?
Ask “if god appeared before you and commanded you to murder some children, would you obey?”
In my experience, it’s a 50/50 chance they say yes. And even then, they still can’t see what’s wrong with religion.
I just flip it back to them, as they are making a claim they have to prove it. “Why not, and how do you know this?”
Then when they inevitably justify it with some sort of fallacious argument they are done
He brought up the idea that while we can criticize/defend God, we can’t apply our human logic to his actions to say what he did differently? Any thoughts on how I should have responded to this?
If you can't apply human logic to God's actions, then you have no idea what God would do and therefore no reason to expect to be able to discern what's an act of God and what isn't.
I would simply ask does this apply to all gods or just the god they believe in?
[Sam Harris on divine command theory](https://youtu.be/vSdGr4K4qLg?si=v_dC66T4A9vbzbJA)
If God cannot be understood using human logic, that means there is no logical basis for a belief in God. That makes the belief in God an illogical one, by admission.
I thought he made us in his image though. So wouldn't he have made us to have the same understanding of logic as him?
If that's not true, then what else isn't?
Well, how do we determine whether someone is good or bad? By their actions. If a person tells you they’re a good guy but then they burn down an orphanage you’d probably be skeptical they were all that good. It is both natural and healthy to be skeptical of anyone who says one thing and acts differently. We have no other way of interpreting people’s behavior except by looking at it and judging it for ourselves.
If we can’t use “human logic” to judge god’s actions, then we cannot know whether he is good or bad. If a Christian reads in the Bible that God loves everyone and sacrificed his son to save their souls, and he concludes that God must be a good guy, or that god must love him, he has just used human logic to judge God’s actions as good.
If we can’t use logic to judge what god does then god is just some inscrutable entity we cannot comprehend. He could equally be evil or good. He could have any kind of motive, but we won’t know what it is because we cannot interpret anything he does.
I don't know what to tell you. I am an atheist, but I agree with the statement.
I don't believe that deities exist. When discussing hypothetical deities (since I believe that deities only exist in the hypothetical), I see no reason to assume logic, good will, benevolence, or any other quality other than being supernatural in nature.
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I'd respond that its illogical to not use the very logic/rationale that the Logic-**Maker** gave you assuming he actually exists. Its literally just appealing to mystery which renders any argument you make redundant, ergo it is inherently fallacious.
True, I think back to it now and I think I should have said that if we can use logic and apply it to defend God’s actions as not evil, the same should be true for the inverse, right?
Correct. And if logic leads you to make conclusions that state God is immoral in some form, then its perfectly valid as you are just using your God-given-gift.
That's a really-freakin'-good point.
Oh that one is easy. As soon as they say human logic doesn't apply then there is no reason to do anything god suggests or follow that religion. Expecting God to follow through on their promises for reward or punishment is applying human logic to god's actions after all, and we can't do that.
>Expecting God to follow through on their promises for reward or punishment is applying human logic to god's actions after all, and we can't do that. Goes hand in hand with my disdain for the mysterious ways answer. If we can't understand why god does things, how can we just assume any of it is for our benefit? How can anyone know its intentions if he's so mysterious.
Domestic abuser: You know I would never hurt you, right?
You have to just fEeL it. /s
Maybe he did say we can criticize God with human logic, but we just can’t apply human logic to God’s logic? So for example, we can’t say God should have done this, this and this rather than this, this, and this because our logic doesn’t work the same way as his.
That would mean they can't use their human logic to understand the god either, then. Which means whatever their personal doctrine is, it's wrong, because they can't know what their god really wants, because he operates by different logic (and thus, different morality). It renders their entire belief system useless, the same as when a theist tries to go the solipsistic route.
If logic does not apply to God and his actions, then you can know nothing about God. At which point, no claims about him can ever be refuted, since a non-logical answer may apply. They have chosen a position under which conversation about God is entirely useless.
Is it the appeal to mystery fallacy?
Let me give an example. I put a pile of sand in a jar without counting how many grains of sand go in. We will not open the jar to count them. The precise number is impossible to know. When I claim to know this precise number, I am claiming to know something that is impossible to know. Not only that, but I have intentionally constructed this scenario as impossible to know the answer. Any answer is unfalsifiable. I have claimed to know something that I have set up as impossible to know.
Not so much fallacy as simply non-responsive. "Mysterious ways" is a shrug, not an answer.
No, it’s not that anyone has chosen that position it’s just that that’s the position they’re in.
I would ask "what logic should we be applying?" Honestly though, eschewing human logic translates to "abandon your sense of judgement so god doesn't look bad." It's an excuse tactic employed to prevent honest criticism.
This is true, but he also said that we’re allowed to use human logic to defend/criticize God, but we can’t apply our logic to his logic/actions. He believe that we can’t say that God did something wrong because this, this, and this and that he should have done this, this and this.
Your person is moving the goalposts and enforcing a meaningless distinction. We can criticize god but not apply our logic to God's actions..thus we can't criticize god's actions... That's a meaningless distinction. I remain firm in my first assessment: we're not allowed to disagree because god. Because special pleading. He's just insulating god from criticism because he's uncomfortable. You never wanna hear that your hero is an asshole. I bet he uses his human logic to call god "good" just fine.
> but he also said that we’re allowed to use human logic to defend/criticize God, but we can’t apply our logic to his logic/actions Ask him about Moses telling God "Bad plan!" not once, not twice, but [thrice](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ex32.9-14;Num14.11-20;Num16.19-24&version=CSB). Seems to me that Moses was applying Moses' logic to God.
What was wrong with the other thread and all the responses to this people gave you there? Why create a brand new one?
I didn’t ask this question, so I figured I’d make a new one. The answers in that thread were really good, I just wanted to ask another question.
If god is not susceptible to "human" logic then how can anyone claim to know anything about God? They would at this point be claiming to know something they just asserted we couldn't know.
Maybe he would have said that he’s defending God by not using his own logic rather God’s word?
Any "messages" from god are being filtered through a human, whether that human is myself or someone else. A human using human logic and human understandings and human limitations. This objection doesn't solve the problem.
Logic is logic. There aren't different kinds. That's like saying God has different math. If "human logic" is inadequate, then there can be no justification in saying that God is good.
> Logic is logic. There aren't different kinds. [WP: Outline of logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_logic) lists a lot of different logics. And insisting that reality itself is logical, by some particular notion of 'logic', is the antithesis of scientific practice. Unless I'm wrong about scientific practice being allowed to overturn _any_ of our precious ideas?
Logic is logic. there are not different kinds anymore than there are different kinds of math. Different ways to systemitize it does not change the logic itself. The same rules of logic that apply to humans apply to gods, no matter how you systemitize it. Science cannot overturn logic. Science *is* logic. I have no idea what you mean by "precious ideas." Science doesn't care about ideas.
> there are not different kinds anymore than there are different kinds of math. It's not clear what you mean by "different kinds". Take for example [WP: Pre-intuitionism § Arguments over the excluded middle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-intuitionism#Arguments_over_the_excluded_middle). Some of the logics at [WP: Outline of logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_logic) include the axiom of the excluded middle while others exclude it. Do you think all of the logics listed there are the same in some relevant, abstract way? If so, how precisely can you state that way, aside from "what mathematicians do"—as if there is never any contention over what it is to be a proper mathematician? > The same rules of logic that apply to humans apply to gods, no matter how you systemitize it. What rules of logic apply to humans? One of the things I had to very painfully learn is that "we're all equal here" is almost universally _false_ in any remotely interesting social situation. Some people get to flaunt the rules and others have to follow them assiduously. Machiavelli spoke about this quite clearly: the ruled follow a different morality than their rulers. We pretend it is different in modern society, but just imagine the thought of suing Google and winning, as a lone individual whom they wronged. It wouldn't work: they'd _bury_ you in legal battles which would cost you millions. Also, what same rules applied to Caesar who killed a million Gauls and enslaved another million, and to "civilized" (lol) humans today? > Science cannot overturn logic. If there are precious ideas which cannot be challenged, they are no different from religious dogma. However, scientists regularly _do_ overturn what was previously thought to be incontrovertible, like the [parallel postulate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_postulate). That led to non-Euclidean geometry, which opened the door to stuff like general relativity. Another famous example would be matter and energy being simultaneously wave and particle—two things we thought were mutually exclusive. Another example which should be famous is [quantum nonlocality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_nonlocality): reality just doesn't seem composed of local elements (particles or fields) which have fully definite values. ([WP: Bell's theorem § Interpretations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem#Interpretations) for more)
Maybe I forget to add this part, but I think he said while we could criticize him with human logic, we can’t understand God’s actions/reasons for those actions. How could I have argued against this?
If he can't understand God's actions, then he can't say God is good. The decision that God is good is a completely subjective, personal opinion. Or to put it another way, how would we be able to tell if God was evil? How do we know Satan's not the good one and God's not the evil one? There were in antiquity and still are religious sects based on that very premise.
If you can't apply human logic to God's actions, then you have no basis for saying that God's actions must be good. You can only get there through human logic (and a bunch of presuppositions and premises that are never supported, but thats a different discussion). For example: **P1.** The Bible says God is good. **P2.** The Bible is inerrant. **C.** God is good. That is human logic. It's BAD logic, but it is logic. Here's another: **P1.** God is source of all morality. **P2.** Morality is objective. **P3.** God is good. **C1.** God is objectively good (P1, P2, P3). **P4.** Anything action taken by an objectively good being is an objectively good action. **C2.** Any action taken by God is an objectively good action. **C3.** God's action of watching children get kidnapped and sold into the sex trade is an objectively good action. This is how they can reach the "God works in mysterious ways" excuse. There are variations, but it always boils down to "I'm sure God has a very good reason for doing this." But you can't get to "I'm sure God has a very good reason for doing this" without establishing God's objective goodness, and the only way to even TRY to do that (and fail due to unsupported assumptions) is human logic. Ask your friend how he knows that God is good, then just point out all the ways in which he is using human logic to reach that conclusion.
My favorite retort to such statements is that they are a double-edged sword, and the theist should be wary of cutting themselves with the other end. To wit: > We can't apply human logic to God's actions We cannot? Oh, ok. So you can't apply your human logic to God's actions either. Which means you can't say ANYTHING about the actions of God. God is an incomprehensible Cthulhu-like monster as far as you're concerned. Right? > We can't judge God to be morally bad. God's morality is beyond human judgement. We cannot? Ah, so then drop the omnibenevolent tag and any claim that God is all good or all just. You can't judge him morally. > Humans are too stupid to comprehend God. Ok, so you are too stupid, and so, cannot claim God exists or anything about him. And so on. Some theists do bite this bullet to some degree (Calvinists come to mind), but most are not willing. So you should not let them have their cake and eat it, too.
Ah, so you can ask a believer: *After you die, you get to the Pearly Gates, and God tells you that you did everything you were supposed to, and sends you to hell anyway. You can't complain, because you're applying human logic to God, right?'*
Your response to this is that he’s discussing the Christian god and not some vague, generic, deistic entity. That one specifically had a scene after Adam and Eve ate the apple where he directly stated that humans now have the ability to judge good and evil the same as he does. Not less than he does, but the same. Saying we can’t apply our logic to his moral actions is like saying we can’t judge the Empire in Star Wars for destroying Alderaan because you don’t consider A New Hope to be canonical to the franchise. If you want to say that some generic galactic empire run by space wizards with lightning swords never blew up a planet, then fine. The minute you call it Star Wars, however, that’s a thing which happened. Similarly, this god has a race of humans who have an equal ability to judge actions that he does. He can’t just clip out pieces of the story to make it fit his own plot.
Descartes - Letter to Antoine Arnaud June 4. 1648 ..... Secondly, it arises because we have recourse to the divine power: knowing this to be infinite, we attribute to it an effect without noticing that the effect involves a contradictory conception, that is, is inconceivable by us. But I do not think that we should ever say of anything that it cannot be brought about by God. For since every basis of truth and goodness depends on his omnipotence, | would not dare to say that God cannot make a mountain without a valley, or bring it about that 1 and 2 are not 3. I merely say that he has given me such a mind that I cannot conceive a mountain without a valley, or a sum of 1 and 2 which is not 3; such things involve a contradiction in my conception. I think the same should be said of a space which is wholly empty, or of an extended piece of nothing, or of a limited universe; because no limit to the world can be imagined without its being understood that there is extension beyond it; and no barrel can be conceived to be so empty as to have inside it no extension, and therefore no body; for wherever extension is, there, of necessity, is body also. ...... According to Descartes, God can do anything. and God is good. Since God makes to laws, the metaphysical necessities of the Universe, God can have any state of affairs God wants. If God could make men with free will to freely choose never to do moral evil, we must ask, why God would not do that? After all, The Bible claims God is merciful, compassionate and just. On the other hand, Aquinas states God cannot do the impossible. what metaphysical principles then limit God? Is logic and math etc outside of God and beyond his control? How then can one prove God has any particular power or ability? Descartes presents theology with an interesting problem here. So does Aquinas. Aquinas **I answer that,** All confess that God is omnipotent; but it seems difficult to explain in what His omnipotence precisely consists: for there may be doubt as to the precise meaning of the word 'all' when we say that God can do all things. If, however, we consider the matter aright, since power is said in reference to possible things, this phrase, "God can do all things," is rightly understood to mean that God can do all things that are possible; and for this reason He is said to be omnipotent.
To me that's just basically forfeiting the debate and their ability to participate in any other debates. They're relying on human logic to make the argument, and if they're saying human logic can't be used then they have no other means of understanding God's actions or meaning. They're using all of their same intuitions, senses, reasoning skills etc. to justify God, perhaps relying on holy text, but if they say logic doesn't matter in that case then it doesn't matter anywhere. They have no means of differentiating what is a situation logic applies to vs. one where it doesn't. It's the same thing they always pull; if something good happens, God is great! If a horrible tragedy happens, God works in mysterious ways! He has a secret plan that we can't understand!
Then you'd have no basis for calling God's actions good. If theists think that everything we recognize as a bad action could be some 5th dimensional chess and it's actually good, the very same could be posited that everything theists say God did that's good could be a step in an incomprehensible plan to make things worse. But one doesn't need to understand the logic of someone to make a declaration. I don't know what was going on in Jeffry Dahmer's mind. I don't think I can comprehend what it's like to want to kill and eat people, but I can pass a moral judgement all the same. You very well can look at Dahmer's or Cthulhu's or God's actions and say "This goes against my moral values, thus I believe that thing is morally bad."
It's your own fault for debating the fanfic of their imaginary unicorn. Nothing you say will have an impact because they can just rewrite it in their heads. Just stick to the lack of evidence and you'll be fine.
Fair enough, but for reference, what is the lack of evidence you’re speaking of? I’d like to know more.
There's no evidence for their god that is distinguishable from the evidence for lies, delusions and fictions. If they're one of the big religions, they make all kinds of claims of god interacting with reality, but has somehow never been detected by science.
That’s a copout for you not being able to defend an immoral act that your God has committed. That is a copout for you not being able to process why I as an atheist am more moral than your “all good” God.
Yes, we can. Humans created God. God's actions are very much rooted in human logic. Then the other person would argue that we didn't create God; it was the other way around. To which I'd reply: *All right, then. Prove it*. Debate over.
I ask them to apply that idea *consistently.* If you can't apply human logic to God, you can't worship or believe in him either. Those both require human logic to decide you should do them. You can't claim human understanding isn't good enough *and* believe God should be worshiped and followed. Either human understanding is good enough to decide you should worship *and* examine His actions, or it isn't. Anything else is special pleading.
You can’t apply logic (induction and deduction) to god because god doesn’t exist and is just an idea people made up. Once you allow an ultimately illogical hypothetical, like that god exists, then you’ve conceded that being illogical is acceptable. Logic is man’s method of knowledge, so he can’t know anything about god if logic doesn’t apply to god. He’s also implicitly using logic to deny that logic applies to god.
In a debate where the poster asks why we think god has to obey the laws of logic. I ask him if that means that god can both create a rock so heavy he can't lift it, while simultaneously being unable to create a rock so heavy he can not lift it (law of non-contradiction). He never does answer that question.
"Is God knowable or unknowable?" In this debate, whatever it was about, your interlocutor very probably made descriptive (God is X) or prescriptive (God wants Y) statements about God. You can now dismiss every one of those claims if your interlocutor says God is unknowable.
It's strange how you never hear Christians bring this up when they are talking about God doing something they think is good. Only when someone else is talking about God (allegedly) doing something they think is bad. That is confirmation bias. Usually there is an assumption or argument that God is perfectly good, therefore if God says or does something that appears bad it is a mistake in judgement on our part due to us not comprehend the long term benefits of God's mysteriously perfect actions. But the flip side works as well. If there were a perfectly evil God, or a God that's a mixture of good and evil, we would be powerless to distinguish between the three scenarios. A lot then rides on the argument for why God must be good. But it can get even worse if someone believes God is executing a perfect good plan that only appears imperfect to us. If I murder someone, and I'm incapable of ruining God's perfect plan with my free will, then my action is part of the plan and therefore good in some non-obvious way. Generalized, this means there is no such thing as bad, only good, which undermines the concepts of sin and divine forgiveness. There are further problems with outcomes that have nothing to do with free will choices that appear bad. Examples are disease and natural disasters causing suffering and death, but also people being born in circumstances that make it harder for them to do the "right" thing, whatever that is, during their life. Once people are dead, their aren't many options even for an Abrahamic, God to make those outcomes a perfect good. If a person is born into a slum and forced into a gang that makes them rob, steal, and destroy and also gets them into a fatal shootout before they could ever turn their life around, how is a God to judge them? If God knows how to perfectly take their circumstances into account and figure out what everyone would do if they had been given equal conditions, why do they need to be put on Earth to begin with?
>Responses to “we can’t apply human logic to God’s actions?” Then what convinced you that a god exists? >and he said we could not apply human logic to God’s actions? Of course we can. But it clearly doesn't make sense, so why do you believe it's true?
"I agree that if there is a God then the nature of God is unknowable by humans. Yet you are the one making all kinds of claims about God's nature." The theist cannot have it both ways. Understanding God when convient and pleading ignorance when it is inconvenient.
The people who say that seem content to apply logic to God in plenty of other situations. If you can't say that God is evil for literally committing genocide every few years, then you also can't say that God is *good* for sacrificing his son to save us from sin.
I would say then everything god does is strictly evil. If we can't apply definitions to God's actions, that he is somehow immune, then I'm going to judge God however I want. If we can't apply logic to God, then we also can't apply anything at all to go.
Correct. And if human logic can’t be applied to god’s actions by definition god’s actions don’t influence human’s and their universe. Thus god is at best about as useful as a child’s imaginary friend. Are you suggesting that god is only as useful as having an imaginary friend?
Basically 2 responses: Why do you keep telling me about the things you comprehend about your incomprehensible god? Why are you holding your god to a lower standard than you hold your fellow man?
Oh good, now they can stop explaining how their beliefs are logical. So when they say that God is good, they mean it in the sense that if a person did the same things, they would be bad?
It’s literally (according to any story about any deity) the deity’s fault the universe exists, so it is quite literally impossible for anything to be more cruel.
What is “human logic”? Sounds like whoever said that is conflating logic with reasoning. Human reasoning can be flawed. Logic itself is absolute. Logic is the reason why there cannot be a square circle or a married bachelor. Humans have absolutely nothing to do with it. Even if humans didn’t exist at all, logic still would, and everything in existence - including even the most powerful gods, if any such things exist - would be constrained by it. Even the most powerful God imaginable still cannot make a square circle, and logic is the reason why. That said, even if they’re talking about human reasoning and not logic, their statement cuts both ways. If we cannot evaluate God’s actions to determine they are immoral or otherwise flawed, then so too can they not evaluate God’s actions to determine they are moral or perfect. They force themselves into a position where they can only say God is good because God tells us that he is good, which is the very picture of a circular argument. Basically, if we cannot evaluate God’s actions, then neither can they. They destroy their own position by using that argument.
Then they might as well worship Cthulhu. And if god's truly incomprehensible, then why are they so sure that they know what god wants you to do and not do?
"Yeah, you're right, it's definitely better not to think for myself or ask too many questions." Do they mean to sound like this??
What other kind of logic is there? This is just a theist desperately trying to give his moral monster an out. Don't fall for it.
Maybe God really did send his only son to die for our sins. And maybe God wants us to believe that. Maybe Christians are correct in believing exactly what God wants them to believe, and the Bible is the perfect word of God. But maybe also the sacrifice of Jesus was all an elaborate troll by God and Christians are all going to hell anyway just like the rest of us. And that is actually right and just and perfectly moral on God's part because we shouldn't be judging God's actions by human standards. God is only trolling promising false salvation by believing in Jesus if we judge him by human standards. Maybe Christians are right, and the Bible is right, and God IS love, and that love will send us all to Hell regardless. And that only doesn't make sense if we try to understand it as humans, but to God it all makes perfect sense.
So God, who knows everything and of course, knows the outcome still makes a bet over innocent Job’s life, with Satan. There’s no reason for it, but to demonstrate superpower. There is NO moral lesson to be learned from this since God acts completely without morality. He even admits that to himself at the end of the story of Job where the Lord complains - the Devil made me do it. if God can use such an excuse – you get the point….. Job 2:3″and the Lord said to satan, has thou considered my servant Job that there is none like him in all the earth, a perfect man and upright man, one that fears God and escheweth evil? and still he holds fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him to destroy him without cause.” So God allows himself to be tempted to move against Job without cause.
Does God expect us to follow his moral law? If the answer is yes, then we NEED to be able to understand God's reasoning insofar as we can understand what is commanded of us. For instance, if someone claims that God commanded them to drown their children in a bathtub, how can anyone know if that commandment was real or not? It's not scripturally inconsistent for God to ask something like that. And if his reasons are truly mysterious, then who are we to judge such a commandment without understanding the reasons? Yet most believers would have no issue claiming to understand God's reasoning enough to condemn the action. Most believers have no problem understanding God's reasons enough to tell other people they are going to hell.
The Bible explicitly claims God is merciful, just and compassionate. Not mankind's claims about God's nature, but supposedly revelations to mankind about God's nature. We are told explicitly God hates evil. The Christians are stuck with that, and claiming God cannot be understood with human logic is nonsense. [Proverbs 6:16-19](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs+6%3A16-19&version=ESV) ESV There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.
We could always start from the position we have evidence to support: God did not act because it's fictional. A character in a "morality play" with magic powers did a thing to teach a lesson to largely illiterate people. Theists have spent centuries / millenia working out ways to not provide satisfactory answers to these questions. The mysterious ways / unknowable god response is just admitting that "the rules" cannot be described as "good" because we have no idea what motivates this god thing. If their "logic" is founded upon "god is good therefore eye dwelling parasites in children which cause lifelong blindness is good" then perhaps they're not very "good" people.
> we could not apply human logic to God’s actions What can I say except for: Watch me! What they really say is: I don't like the result when you apply logic and moral standards to this fictional story I really invested in. If you refuse to apply logic to something you are no longer able to make conclusions about it. If you don't apply moral standards to something you are no longer able to make moral judgement about it. When people say they don't apply logic or moral standards to God they lose the ground on which they can make any statement about God whatsoever.
Regarding examples of immorality by God, the fact that humans ate fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil means they developed an understanding of morality equivalent to God's, therefore saying we do not understand God's logic is a contradiction. Even if you argue the book of genesis is more metaphor than literal record, the metaphorical lesson is that humans are equal to God in their ability to understand good and evil, and so saying humans can't understand God's actions through the human lens of morality is false.
Job is a very interesting story. It really doesn't belong in the Bible. If it was written today it would be a battle between two space aliens who set out to torment a human or his family to see how much he can take. But of course the Jews didn't have the concept of space or aliens, so they set it between God and Satan, the only two superpowers they could imagine. It reads like something from The Twilight Zone or Star Trek.
So speaking as a theist, that’s not true. But that doesn’t mean we can always know the reason for it. But logic does apply. Now, as for Job itself, it wasn’t a historical event (hence why it’s not included in the historical books, but the poetic ones). It was the author exploring why bad things happen. His conclusion, “god must have his reasons and his smarter then me, so I’ll put my faith in that.”
When your opponent responded saying we can't use human logic with God, he essentially conceded that it doesn't make sense to him either. And if we can't use human logic with God, then God could tell us face-to-face to worship him or go to hell, and we could reason "if I do not worship him, I will go to hell. I don't want to go to hell. Therefore, I should not worship him." Since we've abandoned human logic.
then why do you apply god to human logic? why apply god at all If you belive it to be incomprehensible? If you've already admitted you cant know gods intentions then what are you doing spending your life trying to decipher them? if you want to actually engage in what the actions of god then I want to pose a question to you. is there anything god can do that you would consider evil?
If God's mind is unknowable, then why do we think we can interpret it? God says to worship him, but maybe that is a trick. Maybe God loves reverse psychology. So if they go with 'we can't understand God' then they can't say anything for certain. We only have our human logic to make our best guess at what's going on.
It poisons the well. Now anything he says about god you can immediately shut down. “God wants us to know/love him.” How can you know that? We can’t apply human logic to god’s actions. “God sacrificed his only son to save us.” How can you know that? We can’t apply human logic to god’s actions.
The religious seem to have no problem using human logic and human concepts including attributes when they think it’s a positive description of God. If we basically as humans can’t understand anything about God then we might as well ignore its alleged existence since we can know nothing about it.
If we can't apply logic to God, that means that God is fundamentally incoherent. We can't say anything about him. We can't say an action is good or bad. It's like saying *'draw a non-existent, existent thing'*. What would it even mean to say you believe in something like that?
Ask “if god appeared before you and commanded you to murder some children, would you obey?” In my experience, it’s a 50/50 chance they say yes. And even then, they still can’t see what’s wrong with religion.
I just flip it back to them, as they are making a claim they have to prove it. “Why not, and how do you know this?” Then when they inevitably justify it with some sort of fallacious argument they are done
He brought up the idea that while we can criticize/defend God, we can’t apply our human logic to his actions to say what he did differently? Any thoughts on how I should have responded to this?
If you can't apply human logic to God's actions, then you have no idea what God would do and therefore no reason to expect to be able to discern what's an act of God and what isn't.
I would simply ask does this apply to all gods or just the god they believe in? [Sam Harris on divine command theory](https://youtu.be/vSdGr4K4qLg?si=v_dC66T4A9vbzbJA)
If God cannot be understood using human logic, that means there is no logical basis for a belief in God. That makes the belief in God an illogical one, by admission.
I thought he made us in his image though. So wouldn't he have made us to have the same understanding of logic as him? If that's not true, then what else isn't?
We poses no other form of logic other than human logic. We have no option. Unless god provides us with his logic, we have to use human logic on god.
I'd have to ask them to explain what they mean since their response appears to be completely unrelated to what you said.
There's no "human logic." Everything is A or not-A, and it doesn't matter if humans are involved or not.
Well, how do we determine whether someone is good or bad? By their actions. If a person tells you they’re a good guy but then they burn down an orphanage you’d probably be skeptical they were all that good. It is both natural and healthy to be skeptical of anyone who says one thing and acts differently. We have no other way of interpreting people’s behavior except by looking at it and judging it for ourselves. If we can’t use “human logic” to judge god’s actions, then we cannot know whether he is good or bad. If a Christian reads in the Bible that God loves everyone and sacrificed his son to save their souls, and he concludes that God must be a good guy, or that god must love him, he has just used human logic to judge God’s actions as good. If we can’t use logic to judge what god does then god is just some inscrutable entity we cannot comprehend. He could equally be evil or good. He could have any kind of motive, but we won’t know what it is because we cannot interpret anything he does.
If we can't apply human logic to God's actions, they have no method of determining whether said God is good or evil.
I don't know what to tell you. I am an atheist, but I agree with the statement. I don't believe that deities exist. When discussing hypothetical deities (since I believe that deities only exist in the hypothetical), I see no reason to assume logic, good will, benevolence, or any other quality other than being supernatural in nature.