[deccan]

Originally posted by General Woundwort:
I have found that many agnostics/atheists base their doubts about God more on "Well, if God does exist, why doesn't He do this or that?" But questions of what God should be doing (in ones' opinion) are separate from whether or not He actually exists.

I don't quite agree. "God" is one of those ambiguous terms that I was talking about earlier. If theist A wishes to advance arguments for the existence of 'God" for the consideration of a skeptic B, then it is incumbent upon A to provide an unambiguous definition of what he means when he employs the term "God".

Any particular definition of "God" involves attributing particular properties to the entity "God" and unambiguous explanations of those properties, and perhaps ruling out certain other properties. Depending on the specific definition of "God" used, refuting the validity of the argument by questioning whether or not "God" actually performs actions that the properties ascribed to "God" logically implies that "God" ought to do and ought to be able to do, could in some, though not all, circumstances, be a sound approach.

In any case, GW, I'm glad to see that we can come to some sort of general agreement. Reasonable people *can* politely discuss controversial issues even if they are on opposite sides of the fence.