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Permalink Reply by Waldheri on March 25, 2009 at 11:23am

Why would you have to counter this / Why is it important? The theist who makes this claim will also be ignorant about God's plan.

It's a kind of cop-out though, because anything that happens can be claimed to have to have happened according to God's plan.

However, this can in turn be used to claim that you as an atheist are so because it is part of God's plan, so the theist may stop trying to convince you.

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Permalink Reply by noisician on March 25, 2009 at 12:01pm

Simply correct the xtian:
"I'm sure you meant to say: you cannot know The Flying Spaghetti Monster's plan."

If he has a problem with that, let him try to refute this completely empty statement.

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Permalink Reply by Johnny on March 25, 2009 at 12:25pm

Ask them if they believe God is omniscient. The typical answer will be that they do; it can then be argued that he knows the future, he is not planning the future. This can also be worked into Waldheri's argument that since he knows the future he knew you were going to be an atheist, so nothing they can say will change that.

Also once omniscient is on the table you can have some fun with the other omni's; and even try using the Epicurus quote.

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Permalink Reply by Rev. James Thomas Hicks, D.D. on March 25, 2009 at 1:04pm

Let's throw in suicide. The ultimate sin. Suicides got straight to hell, correct? Was this God's plan? Does it "change" God's plan for everyone effected by said suicide? There can't be a "plan" if we can just fuck up God's all mighty plan. Or maybe God planned the suicide & sent some poor bastard to hell for the common good of everyone else... Fuck that.

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Permalink Reply by Kira on March 25, 2009 at 3:35pm

Good responses so far. Thank you thank you

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Permalink Reply by Brandon on March 27, 2009 at 3:45pm

AKA God works in mysterious ways.
AKA We cannot understand God because he is far superior.

The problem with these arguments is that they basically say that logic cannot be used to understand the world.

Once you throw logic out the window, anything is game. Feel free to get ridiculous.

I saw this somewhere once. "God made me an atheist. Who are you to question his infinite wisdom?"

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