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Originally Posted by Cynosure
Even so, it appears to me that atheists are want to lump all gods together, whether it be the omniscient and omnipotent, all- and ever-present God of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, who is perfect and peerless, or the anthropomorphic, physical (albeit immortal, though they can die or be destroyed) and limited (albeit super-powerful) gods of Greek, Norse and Hindu mythology, who are flawed, as well as many and competitive with one another.
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It depends on what you mean by "are want to lump all gods together." If you mean that all atheist lump all gods into the category of fiction then yes, they do, by definition. If you mean that they think they're all the same, well that's simply untrue. They're obviously different, at least literally speaking...
Why did you even bring this up? It looks like a complete non-sequitur to your conversation...
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If there is a God, it stands to reason that he/she (surely, such a God would be both and neither) would be an intelligent, sentient, and, yes, even caring being. Why? Because of the representation given by us human beings, who are like points of light – thinking, feeling, and caring – in a dark, vast and cold universe that operates like highly complex, yet utterly impersonal, clockwork. As for the other animals on our world: even the brightest of them are vastly inferior to us human beings in their ability to think, feel and care, for they are mostly if not entirely limited to their instincts and programming.
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This makes no sense.
If there is a god, he would be caring because... we can conceive of such a thing? Care to elaborate on that?
I also don't think we're nearly as smart as you think we are, relative to the other animals on Earth. The other primates are capable of surprisingly abstract thought and communication. They can even understand the concept of zero; an abstract idea that came surprisingly late in human history.
The thing that really separates us from the other animals is our capacity for complex language. Other animals clearly think and care about things. Some of them don't have nearly as much instinct as you might think.
What do you mean by "programming?"