Okay, I'll branch this thread off the other one myself if you guys don't want to take the initiative. It may die in silence, but at least I tried. :p
RULES
-No flaming or trolling. Emphasis on flaming. Keep the argument down to a mild level.
-Back up what you say. I know it's hard for this, but don't just say something like "God is evil". Tell WHY you think God is evil, and use logic to back it up if you have tot. If you want to say "God is good", then the same goes for you.
-Keep this as mature as possible. This is basically like repeating the first rule, but don't let your emotions/beliefs get in the way of your argument. It makes you and your whole case look childish.
STARTING ARGUMENT:
Supposing that a God exists, he cannot be both benevolent and omnipotent, because evil also exists.
shut up
Science == worst board on 4ch
Won't anybody think of the scientists??
Things that must be said to arrive at the conclusion of this matter cannot be spoken. For my own sake and yours, God don't want me to share this... Yet
lulz
There are many typical counter arguments. What do you say about them?
> God is omnipotent but he created human as finite being intentionally.
Thus, god is not benevolent.
> God is good but mankind degenerated and brought evil into the world.
Thus, god is not omnipotent (if he couldn't prevent this) or not benevolent (if he could but didn't prevent this).
> God is benevolent so he forgives our sin and brings us into heaven where no evil exists.
God is not omnipotent (if he can only prevent evil this way, and not by simply eradicating it) or not benevolent (if he can but doesn't).
>>8
There have been thousands of deities, how do you know you're worshipping the correct one?
GTFO
The followers of all those other gods would say the exact same thing. What makes you different?
The followers of all those other gods would say the exact same thing. What makes you different?Pardon me, but this just shows your lack of knowledge regarding world religions. Only a handful of religions, outside of Christianity, claim revelation by a personal God, and those that do can be easily refuted. Still though, that is not the point, the point of this thread is 'the problem of evil.' It is my position that the very concept of evil cannot be accounted for absent an absolute standard. Rather than appeal to other religions, why don't you tell me by what absolute standard YOU call anything 'evil.'
> Pardon me, but this just shows your lack of knowledge regarding world religions. Only a handful of religions, outside of Christianity, claim revelation by a personal God, and those that do can be easily refuted.
Let's see you do that, then.
>>11
Really, you need to know more about religion before you try to argue about it. Otherwise you just end up looking stupid, like you did in your post.
Please don't join proofthatgodexists.org in completely missing the point.
lol, i'd hate to join proofthatgodexists.org in anything.
you people really need to read "the god delusion" by richard dawkins.
I did it for the lulz!
How about the FSM? It seems irrefutable until now.
god created evil, while not able to do it himself, so that people realize the need for a god :p
or, mabey gravity doesnt exist, and the enemys gate allways HAS been down.
Why does evil make people realize they need a god when it was a god who created it?
Fuck this thread. FUCK IT IN THE ASS.
Science fuckers!
Nature didn't create evil, people created this perception of evil. An asteroid hitting the earth, or a tsunami isn't evil, just chaotic; but a murderous serial killer with a chainsaw is definitely evil.
>>24
so would an infant raised by wolves, who had no contact with other humans, recognize this murderous serial killer with a chainsaw as definitely evil? would they understand the concept of 'evil' at all?
(that's what those who argue for the proof from morality claim, which means we'll have to perform such an experiment to disprove it)
Morality is a human construct that varies between cultures and has no objective reality at all.
I wonder about that. Consider the following experiment:
There are two cages. Connecting the two cages is a board. The first cage has a rope that if pulled will cause the board to collapse, and everything on it to fall off. The second cage has a rope that pulls whatever is on the board towards it. Now put a chimp in each cage, a person sitting in front of the board, and a bowl of bananas on the board.
If the human gives the bowl to the chimp in the first cage, and the chimp in the second pulls the rope to pull the food towards itself, the chimp in the first gets angry and yanks its rope, causing the food to fall on the floor out of reach of everyone.
If the human gives the bowl to the chimp in the first cage, then snatches it away and gives it to the second, the first chimp doesn't do anything.
What if it's a beef bowl from Yoshinoya and the first chimp asks for extra sauce?
If it so happens, that chimp is lawful neutral.
But >>29 will want to interrogate him. For roughly an hour. Because he suspects that chimp just likes saying "extra sauce."
(Shooks my head........)
The way I see it, to validate the exsistance of the concept of good and benevolence, God needed to create the concept of evil and malice. Without one or the other, how will a person be able to accurately define what is "good" and "evil"? However, this raises concerns that God Himself is not benevolent because he created evil. God's benevolence is revealed by allowing humans to have the ability to be redeemed from damnation, even though they are unworthy of such salvation. God chooses to reveal his benevolence this way because it's in accordance with his "plan". What is this plan? iono, lol ¯\(º_o)/¯
If there is a god, then i think that we would all end up rotting in hell cuz he/she lets us do what ever we want...death, b, ect. But that only relies to a single god.
To me god in the christan religeon is a hoax, yes, in the bible it does say that god created light on not the 1st day, so that could get everyone "proof" of the fossils milions of years before man, but then again we have fossil records of plants, plants need light to survive.
Also, god is just one sadistic bastard, satan didnt do anything near as bad as he did, lucifer was just the wrong guy at the wrong time, god = crusades, killing of own son, hitler ect so you tell me if hes not charlie manson in christian form.
As far as multiple gods, that works much easier and as for religeons, hinduism has been along for a while, with their "we are the chosen people" and "we have multiple god so you can pick which one you want to worship" view on things it makes being a good hindu alot easier.
Personally i think worship of the personal human body is the onyl thing to do, being that only you can prevent forest fires, and only you can make things move forward in life.
God isn't responsible for the evil acts that humans enact upon each other. He is not our "maid" and shouldn't have to clean up after ourselves. Humans bestow heinous acts upon each other because humans are steeped in "sin" and coupled with free will, are capable of acts that can be called truly satanic in nature.
In response to God killing His own son, God allowed men to kill his own son because of his Love towards humans that he was willing to shed the blood of his own son in order for humans to be able to obtain salvation.
For the comment about crusades, sure flagrant hypocrisy does mar what the church stands for, but in essence, should not invalidate the objective truth-claims of christianity. john Montgomery wrote, "If Albert Einstein was arrested for shoplifting, would that make E=mc2 wrong"? The example might be a little far'fetched, but the ideology behind the quote doesn't change, which is: A message or teaching can still be true even if the messenger is morally flawed.
In connection with the third paragraph, there is a general misconception that Christianity is essentially about moral rules. Like in the first sentece, this idea is a misconception. Too many Christians these days place too much emphasis on ethics and not enough on the salvation aspect. McGrath puts it in these words, "Christianity is a strongly ethical faith. This does not, however, Christianity is about a set of rules, in which christians mechanically conform to a set of directions. Rather, it is about a set of values which arises from being redeemed."
Light was actually the second thing God created, which was after the heavens and the earth. Life started to appear after the second "day". Ugh, why did I type this out again
>>34 does not realize that if this version of God exist, humanity does not and cannot have free will, even in principle.
This version of the Judeo-Christian God is, granted, more a creation of 19th and 20th Century theologians than anything found in the original source material. But I do not think he grasps fully the meaning of the words "omnipotent" and "omniscient."
Consider a sandstorm on the planet Mars. The position and trajectory of every particle of dust in it is known to this God and cannot exist other than in accordance to the will of this God, who brought the universe into existence by the power of His own will. Nothing can exist and nothing can happen that is contrary to His will, and nothing can exist and nothing can happen that is unknown to Him.
The orbit of every electron around every atom in our brains is known to Him and cannot move contrary to His will. His divine plan requires it.
Thus we are not truly alive at all. We have no will of our own. We are humaniform puddles of blue-green algae that He uses as finger-puppets, telling Himself a long intricate story so that He won't be lonely in the big empty universe He made. He has provided us the illusion that we exist, that we experience pleasure and pain, that we make choices, but nothing of the kind is happening. We are the hands on the clock face of a clockwork universe He constructed and wound up. No more. And we are of no more significance than any pebble orbiting in the rings of Saturn.
Well, the concept of true free will is an extremely difficult idea to comprehend in accordance to the nature of God. I mean, Saint Augustus of Hippo recanted his faith because of this conflict and John Calvin simply stated that the idea of free will is an illusion created by God, so if some of the people who knew quite about their stuff had some doubts, I sure as hell don't know the real answer, but I'll share with you how I see it as.
Imagine the known universe resides in a sphere. Now God created this sphere and holds the laws of physics, the time plane, stars, planets, etc. God exists outside this sphere where the concept of time hold no bearing over him or anything outside of the sphere. The way I see it is, the choices we make are all in a linear fashion (in terms of chronology)and each choice has a chance to branch off into a different direction. Now, the way I see it is that God knows each person's course of action even before their conception in the womb. Although God knows which course of action you will take and where you will end of at the end of your life, it is not by his command that you chose that course in your life, but it was by your own choice. God did not force you to go in a certain direction, but he knew which way you decided to go even before the known universe was created. In this sense, God still retains his omniscience by being able to determine which path you will take in life without interfering with your free will. This idea does not necessarily challenge God's omnipotence, because God still retains his power
I created the sphere concept because I wanted to emphasize that God exists outside this sphere so he is able to observe everything that goes on within this sphere without tampering with free will that he had granted us.
I would also like to bring up the point that the main difference between angels and humans is that angels have no free will. The only known angel that did have free will is lucifer, and we all know what happened to him.
In the end, Free will doesn't challenge the authority of God in terms of his omniscience or omnipotence. If anything, it challenges his benevolence.
I hope that made sense. That was the first time I actually put those thoughts into words so it might not make much sense. If something doesn't seem right, just point it out and I'll try to rephrase and reword as best as possible
> Although God knows which course of action you will take and where you will end of at the end of your life, it is not by his command that you chose that course in your life, but it was by your own choice.
That doesn't make any sense to me. Which is it:
I think the concept of free will is not so black and white, which is why alot people struggle with this idea, myself included. Basically, you can do whatever you want, however the course of action you are planning to take throughout your life has already been revealed to God even before you existed. It's not so much that God decided you take a certain path, but God knowing what paths you will take way before you were born. Think of God existing outside the temporal plane and he can peer both into the past, present and future at the same time. I think the best way I can describe it is as someone watching a movie, but has full knowledge of what will happen and has the ability to interact with the characters (like the purple rose of cairo lol). He see the characters making choices and performing actions, all according to their own free will, but God/moviegoer already knows what they will do. If a character is about to die, God/moviegoer knows that it will happen, but will choose not to intervene because it is the result of the choices that the character had made and by interfering, He diminishes our free will. It shows how God has full knowledge of our actions, but chooses not to interfere because he wants to preserve the free will that he gave us.
lol sorry I really don't know how to explain this concept any better. I'm just trying to make sense of a concept that two major practitioners of this faith had trouble with. But in the end, what does it matter if we have free will or not? Those that were chosen to be saved will be saved and those that aren't, will not. Who are we to bite the hand that feeds us?
>>36 Imagine the known universe resides in a sphere. Now God created this sphere and holds the laws of physics, the time plane, stars, planets, etc. God exists outside this sphere where the concept of time hold no bearing over him or anything outside of the sphere.
wat
no, seriously. What is this? It's not even an ad hoc hypothesis. It's idle speculation. It has no explanatory power. It makes no testable predictions. I am not even sure it makes any sense when I try to parse it in English. How does this whole "God exists outside of time" work, exactly?
Ok, the way I see it is, the concept of time and the sequential fashion in which events take place is all because there is a concept of beginning and end which in turn, is connected with the concept of time. God, having created time, exists outside these parameters so he is able to see both into the past, present, and future. Ok, let me try to clarify again and take a different approach, since it was a mess a couple of times.
There is a piece of paper on your desk and you're staring at it. At this point, let us assume that the paper is the known universe and you are God. As you look at the piece of paper, you are able to see the course of action of everything that resides within this piece of paper. Now, you are able to witness the beginning, middle, and end of all things within this piece of paper because you exist outside of the idea of time.
This is, of course, complete and utter speculation. For all we know, free will can be just an illusion like what john calvin said. In the end, it doesn't really matter does it?
I think the reason that the whole problem of evil is so hard is that we're culturally monotheists, so we have to put everything at the feet of a single divinity.
But in a polytheist or even a duoteist system, you have a second option. Evil is the fault of a God of Chaos or a Trickster Diety. Anyway, since you don't need any single God to be all powerful, all knowing, or anything like that, you also have very little problem with free will.
Evil exists because evil spirits/gods are causing problems.
>>39
alrighty then my friend. allow a fellow agnostic/atheist explain what >>36 said. imagine the universe is a program (we will call it sphere.exe or the matrix, whichever you prefer). God is the programmer. He wrote all the code that defines how it works. he made the time.dll file and he made the earth.bmp file, ect. he, being the programmer, exists outside of his porgram ie he is unaffected by all of this. the laws of time-space do not apply to him as he is a being beyond the confines of said universe. that is the idea being put forth here. god then procedes to produces his sims (liiving things) and lets them interact. he knows exactly what conflicts will occur based on our own processing algorithms. he knows what every permutation of every option that can be selected and executed will lead to and sees every system error coming but chooses not to interfere. He is not the one playing the game but knows exactly what will happen when the game is played. envision him as a game developer that knowlingly releases a bugged game and chose not to fix it.that is the arguement that >>36 put forward. if this is the case, then "god" is neutral at best and hence, not benevolent.
yes he is. if i build an H-bomb in my basement and leave it there while i go off on vacation and it goes unstable and explodes, destroying all of florida, I am responsible for the mess it made. If i make a program and it fails and turns into a worm that devestates corporations accross the globe ( like MS Blaster) im responsible, regardless of my intentions. Just like the kid who made blaster with the intent of fixing computers for the world paionlessly was. When you make something, you are responsible for the damage it causes. The greater your ability to fix these problems, the greater your responsibility to do so.
yes he is. if i build an H-bomb in my basement and leave it there while i go off on vacation and it goes unstable and explodes, destroying all of florida, I am responsible for the mess it made. If i make a program and it fails and turns into a worm that devestates corporations accross the globe ( like MS Blaster) im responsible, regardless of my intentions. Just like the kid who made blaster with the intent of fixing computers for the world paionlessly was. When you make something, you are responsible for the damage it causes. The greater your ability to fix these problems, the greater your responsibility to do so.
>>45, yes you are. if you do a double post on 4-ch and leave it there while the rest of us go on vacation, and it double-posts, destroying all of /science/, you are responsible for the mess it made.
lol right you are. i am responsible for that. it dont see how it destroys all of /science/ but whatever. i thought i deleted the second one. shoulda been deleted by mod too. but ill fix it.
bah, i cant seem to delete my own post on this board. fail.
My personal view is that God is NOT all powerful, the simplest reason being that to be all powerful you would need to satisfy conditions that are mutually exclusive (ie make a stone so heavy that not even he can lift it). I'd like to think that god would prevent people from committing atrocities on each other like those committed during WW2, but it is just that he is unable to do anything to stop them.
>>50
In the words of "Jesus-H-Christ", who posts on reddit, discussing how He (God) can be His own son:
"Humans can comprehend only one internally consistent logical model, but gods can hold several mutually inconsistent models in their mind at the same time (like superposition in quantum physics). Reality does not match any single model (or meta model at infinitum, you get the idea), you need to apply several at once. I contain multitudes, so I can grok reality easily. You guys are left with one truth at the time (you can switch between them though, like in binocular rivalry)."
Thus, God can create a boulder in one logical model which humans using another logical model (such as atheism) may perceive Him as being unable to lift.
He may also perform or permit actions which appear wholly evil in one logical model, but are not evil in His logical model of preference.
Also, you suck for unearthing this doomed thread from its peaceful grave. Let it rest. It's the humane thing to do.
> Supposing that a God exists, he cannot be both benevolent and omnipotent, because evil also exists.
If a God does not exist, who defines what is "evil"? Evil cannot exist without God. If we accept the assumption that evil exists, then we must conclude that some God does exist. We must also conclude that this God is either not omnipotent or not benevolent, or that evil serves some benevolent purpose.
>>52 of course evil exists without god. What does not exist is absolute evil, since evil must always be stipulated by someone, mortal or immortal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdnWwlZCsSw
This made me really sad.
The problem of evil question usually assumes god can only have the intelligence and patience of the incredible hulk, and therefore must immediately act on everything he does not like.
Let's take Abraham offering Issac as a thought exercise. God's foreknowledge means He knows Abraham would have Issac, so why wait until a second before he does it? So Abraham actually has the perspective of having to go through the decision.
Think about how different the two options would be for Abraham. On one hand, he goes so close to killing his son, and then being told that being willing to was enough at the last second, as opposed to if God had just said. "Yeah, I know if I told you to offer your son you'd do it." without actually asking anything.
God disproves of our evil actions, but in order not to be malevolent, He doesn't force us out of it, but commands us not to do evil.
I'm with Michael Schmidt-Salomon in claiming that the good/evil distinction, as well as morality, is obsolete and perfectly possible to replace with a framework based on ethics, where right and wrong are decided by the harm done to oneself and others.
>>55
I don't see it that way. It seems to me that the question is based on God's stipulated omnipotence.
The universe is an exact reflection, from infinitesimal moment to infinitesimal moment, of the Divine will. Nothing exists, nothing can exist, contrary to His will. In a sandstorm on the planet Mars, the path and trajectory of every individual particle of dust is chosen and controlled by God in order to advance a Divine plan for the universe. The fusing hydrogen atoms at the heart of the Sun obey Him. Every atom in the universe, every particle, every photon, every phenomenon, exists as it is, where it is, moves as it does, because that is God's exact will.
What does that imply about us, we who are made of mere matter, mere clay for the Divine hand to mold, to breathe life into, and sent on our way in the world He made?
>>57
You're still using a good/evil distinction, and simply defining evil as harm. Also, harm is inevitable. By simply surviving, you are harming every other person on the planet by using up oxygen, water, and food. So you're saying that survival is evil, and we should all just kill ourselves to minimize the harm we do to the rest of the universe.
good and evil are up to a subject as a purpose, an existence, and the criterion for the good/evil. if the purpose is not defined, no existence and no judge for good/evil.the definition, as a law, must has a sense for the existence.
God has a purpose to make this world exist.it's Christ.God wants to love and to be loved by human.God wants human to be sacred with love for Christ.
Love is to demand the existence of the subject.all existence exist by the knowledge of good/evil, which is of the ethics.(of course by word with personality, because concept can be treated only by word.)
that's why human has animal body to be sacrificed by holiness but not by law of Moses with no divinity over the flesh.
that's why God had let human eat the knowledge of good/evil.
that's why human took cloth to refuse the existence of the animal body which has no demand of the existence, the ethics.
that's why Christ exists as the purpose of this world. you who refuse god's purpose are alive by God who chose him as his purpose.God loves his enemy.
that's why human must die, because the life/death is judged with existence as the criterion of good/evil, which human had eaten the knowledge.you kill Christ and your existence when you chose another purpose for this world and yourself.
that's why human must die, because the life/death is judged with existence as the criterion of good/evil, which human had eaten the knowledge. you kill Christ and your existence when you chose another purpose for this world and yourself.
that's why you can demand life or death as much as you are holy or evil for the purpose, and have emotion to be happy, anger, sad, and afraid when you demand universality or refuse it of the subject, and it is or not.
that's why God is love, holy, and omnipotent, which is not for any nonsense. because Here is the existence which needs love, holiness for the purpose, and the divinity to make it real.
why do you kill each other for nations, no "sacred" land, identity of animal flesh and blood which is often for ethnic base, which are to be burned by Christ. or are you slaves who are under just names-like "America","Women", or family names-, as before the knowledge of good/evil?
>>58 wait, you're saying that God actually wanted and commanded that the nazis commit those atrocities in world 2 and that it was God's will that ted bundy, jeffery dahmer, and all those other psychos out there kill/torture people? Sorry but those are not the actions of a loving god. It's possible that some sort of rule prevents God from interfering with the universe directly. Then again maybe he DOES interfere and things would actually be a whole hell of a lot of worse if he was really standing around doing nothing and letting evil run rampant.
Theist, theist everywhere.
It's near impossible to engage in a debate with someone that disregards all of the evidence that you can possibly throw their way because of some sort of emotional bias that they have due to how they were raised or some sort of "miracle" that occurred in their life.
If god has always existed then what's keeping other organisms from doing the same?
The whole purpose of god is to explain existence and if you can't explain god's existence than perhaps the organisms that evolved into what we are today have also existed since the beginning of time thus defeating the purpose of a god.
Actually somebody has proven in youtube the existence of God. It would be even suspicious not to be a theist.
>>59
No, I'm not, it's a lot more nuanced than that. The framework is all about doing the least amount of harm, not none at all (which is usually impossible, depending on your definition of harm). You should really read Schmidt-Salomon's book, it's a shame it's unlikely to get an English translation any time soon.
>>62
I am merely exploring the meaning of the word "omnipotent." If an all-powerful God exists, then all these things must have been His will. Otherwise they could not have happened, for nothing can happen that is contrary to the will of God.
When we look at it that way, perhaps an empty, uncaring universe doesn't seem so bad after all.
>>67 used ALL CAPS. It's super effective!
>god is good (christian dogma), and wants the well-being of humans
>god is all knowing and all powerful
>[i]some[/i] humans do bad things
>god doesnt punish them
why?
inb4 free will
that would make god inherently bad, because he's letting humans do bad things
>bible says retarded things
>ex. homosex
>god doesn't do anything
why?
>>72
Who are you to decide what is "evil" or "horrible"?
>>74
Non-human animals torture, rape, and murder all the time. Are they evil? What about plants? Bacteria? Viruses? What about hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and volcanoes? Are they evil? Your body kills millions of microscopic organisms every day, and you don't even notice. Does that make you evil?
There are a lot of people who actually think the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews, and those people would probably call you evil. What makes you right and them wrong?
>>76
And only you get to decide who counts as "people"?
>>78
Ah, speciesism. Because racism is okay as long as the people you're discriminating against can't call you out on it.