Well that's just because God works in mysterious ways you lil silly Billy.
Here's your answer.
You know what they say, the best way to make someone an atheist is to make them actually read the Bible from front to back.
I have a friend who was a serious muslim so she started reading the quran and then relized at the age of 8 that the whole thing is bs so she stopped believing. Its funny because there are a bunch of people who tell her how shes disrespecting her ancestors and she should at least read a bit into it. She probably knows more about it than 90% of the people telling her about it.
Just understanding the historical facts and what the very religion that produced it holds as fact and fiction, because it's not even intended to be factual vs. A bed time story, will make most people realize either their religion is made by fools and liars, or they need to adapt a very symbolic kind of faith.
Can they slip the geniologies? They're just there to prove the guy in the story is really truly the descendant of someone holy and important, so add nothing if you just presume the protagonist is a proper protagonist
Wow people from thousands of years ago were people from thousands of years ago. Checkmate, everyone. I am so smart.
This is sorta the beginners philosophy question. There are plenty of answers, it's not the "gotcha" it appears to be. Those answers unroll into all sorts of branching other conversations but they exist.
Maybe it's because free will exists.
Maybe there's a greater purpose for what we call "evil" that results in more good.
Maybe it's a definitional thing, where "evil" to us is always going to be the most-evil existent thing so if existing evils were gone "evil" would still exist but it would consist of aggressive kitten licks or something. So "evil" can't not exist, but it's not because God can't get rid of what we call "evil" now.
Maybe there's a greater purpose for what we call "evil" that results in more good.
A work of fiction I very much enjoy called UNSONG uses a variant of this as the answer to the question of evil. The basic notion being that at the level of abstraction that God operates at two identical things are essentially one thing and so in order to maximize the total net good he creates universe upon universe, all slightly different but each ultimately resulting in more good than bad in net. The universe the story takes place in is recognizably similar to ours until the Nixon administration, and it is explicitly said to be "far from the center of the garden". IOW in a region of possibility space in which few potential universes are good on net.
The story is also an absolute master class in foreshadowing to the point that if you just listen as the story repeatedly tells you how one should interpret text, you can derive the ending from like the first paragraph of chapter 1 by just digging deep enough. And it goes a lot deeper than that. It's not just an aesthetic choice that every chapter name is a Blake reference, or that the story is arranged into groupings of four, ten, twenty two and seventy two. It also manages to analogize itself to both the works of William Blake and the song American Pie because why not?
Maybe it's because free will exists.
Then God shouldn't have given it to us, still his fault, OP still applies
Maybe there's a greater purpose for what we call "evil" that results in more good.
Then God should have given us the understanding of it so we're not left to question him, OP still applies
Maybe it's a definitional thing, where "evil" to us is always going to be the most-evil existent thing so if existing evils were gone "evil" would still exist but it would consist of aggressive kitten licks or something. So "evil" can't not exist, but it's not because God can't get rid of what we call "evil" now.
Shitty point, we have a clear definition of what these evils are currently and yet nothing is done about them. Maybe if we somehow lived in a world that no longer had the evils we see today you'd have a point but this is just a silly one
But free will cannot exist with an omniscient god, because if he knows everything, then everything is predetermined, giving us no free will and also making god evil for allowing all the suffering to happen. And if free will does exist god isnt omniscient
According to the Bible, God never gave man free will. He only gave us the free will to accept the knowledge of actions. However, it reads more like how you would think of a child as innocent – humans didn't know what was good or bad. Of course, the Garden of Eden was never real and the story was just a story.
However, the Bible also states that the reason we have free will is because love and good aren't forced. You can't love someone or perform a good deed if those are your only options. You have to choose to do so. The angels also had free will which is what led to Lucifer and his followers.
I'm not religious anymore, but my parents are still super Catholic. My dad taught Sunday school growing up and still works for a church while my mom is a teacher at a Catholic high school.
Without free will, true worship cannot exist. (If God is God, he certainly has the right to create us for the sole purpose of worshipping him.)
To your latter points, I agree that we know clearly what evil (a.k.a sin) is—sin is anything apart from God's character (e.g. the fruit of the spirit to start).
However, it's not up to us to "get rid" of evil, that's on God, and that's exactly what he did when he sent his son Jesus to die on the cross as a substitute for the punishment we deserve, and when he rose from the grave he signified that substitution was complete. If we truly accept that fact, then God considers us saved ("redeemed"). And, one day Jesus will come back and eliminate evil once and for all.
As to why God allowed evil to enter the world in the first place, well, that's one of the cornerstone discussions of Christian theology, I can't easily summarize that here. In short, a redeemed world can know God's love and worship him more deeply than a world which was never fallen to begin with. (And again, if God is God, he absolutely has the right to create us—and all of creation—for the sole purpose of bringing him glory.) Here's an excellent article that explains this more fully.
What annoying when people who have no grasp of what philosophy about starting saying these statement and expect me to answer them.
Edit: reading the comment is also annoying. When someone mention God, many assume the statement reference their own religion and draw conclusion based on it. I had someone start talking about god doesnt exist because “the proofs” are wrong, but these proofs all driven from his own religion. ( ex christian talking about statement that doesnt make sense in the bible) when I attempt to speak on higher level ( forgot all religions lets talk about god as an entity or thought ) they kept circling around to same points.
Many people dont know how to debate or what they are debating.
I learned fairly early even as I was in Sunday school that I'm a better, more moral person than god. And I'm just a flawed person. So what use is such a god to me or anyone?
You don't know that. You haven't been exposed to the same power that God has. You think deleting the toilets of your Sims is funny at the human level because the Sims don't experience life the way we do. Imagine that scaled 1000x up.
Ask yourself: would you delete the toilet of every man, woman, and child on Earth just for giggles? Based on my past actions in videogames, I know I would.
The continuing existence of my toilet is proof that I know that God is a better person than me.Not that god is real, cause he isn't. But I always found him to be an abusive, gaslighting piece of shit. Imagine telling your kids "I love you more than anything, I created you in my image. I want you to be happy and loved... But if you don't accept my love, I'm going to murder you and torture you with fire for all eternity... But I love you!"
To get around this, ancient fuckers in my country invented reincarnation and karma. That conveniently also gave them the license to be supremely racist.
I don't know though the Americans managed to be super racist while being Christian. They got around that one by just classifying anyone they didn't like as not a real person.
Religion has always been the excuse, it's never been a preventative.
I mean DUH, obviously it is impossible to have any objective morality without appealling to my own personal, internally inconsistently defined God whose written word I am certainly interpreting correctly after being filtered through tens of thousands of writers and editors and translators through thousands of years, whose objectivity morality also 'works in mysterious ways' whenever it seems contradictory!
Its simple!
Who are you to challenge God's word?
Who are you to challenge God's word
* points to a book written and edited by humans
(Not arguing with you, just showing my amusement at standard Christian bullshit)
Nuh-uhhh, it's the WoRD oF GoD
Which god was he talking about anyway ? They had thousands of the fuckers at the time.
A more general tri-omni god
This was a guy who assumed the existence of Platonic solids. He clearly had a streak of monotheism in him.
Disgusting. I hope they threw him off a cliff.
Or maybe he’s just a cunt, what with all the murdering people.
I know this is a circle-jerk meme, but I'mma pitch my two cents anyway.
If we are talking about the Abrahamic god... "he" is both good and evil. So no; to be omnipotent one must also be responsible for evil. Kinda duh.
I could go on, but that right there is pretty much all that needs to be said regarding that god in particular. Good and Evil are man-made concepts, and subjective as all hell.
If you're going off the old testament God is a jealous, vindictive asshole. New testament was a very successful attempt to white wash this with all that "love they neighbour" bullshit.
The Bible is wild.
That whole vibe is pretty much what created Christian gnosticism. The "creator God" or the idiot demiurge actually is the evil god from the old testament that trapped your soul in an evil reality. The good God and Jesus are here to help you transcend it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaldabaoth
For those elder scrolls players who wanted to know what Lorkhan was about: here he is.
Then isn't it wrong of the Abrahamic God to ask humans to do good if good is subjective anyway?
That's a fun question!
But there is that pesky "good" and "evil"! "wrong" and "right" are the same thing.
Isn't it evil of the Abrahamic God to ask humans to do good if good is subjective anyway? Well, yes xD
Good and Evil are man-made concepts, and subjective as all hell.
Gotta get all D&D True Neutral Druidic on this and recognize life as a cycle. The wolf eats the lamb, the lamb eats the grass, the grass eats the bodies of them both. What is good here? What is evil?
To eliminate "evil" one must do far worse things than murder. One must assert one's will over the very foundations of nature itself.
Like ripping fruit from a tree.
Or calling it a tree
Where God is humanist principle, and God is a humanist, then circularly, principle exists without micromanaging intervention in perpetuity.
The old testament is extremely problematic. Israelite hasbara coup. Polytheistic relgion at the time was Canaanite. The descendants of Noah's grandson. El was main god, that Israel is named after, and all other god's were his offspring. Greek rule over the region, had Greeks say that all of the major Canaanite gods were the same as the Greek gods, with El as Zeus. Yahweh was the tribal god of Israelites. But it is basically very easy for any priest to invent a new god, based on narrower factional/fertility needs to collect revenue for rewarding the priest to champion your tribe/goals contrary to humanism.
The problems with old testament start with 10 commandments
There is no god before me (Yahweh), is a coup over El.
"Though shalt not covet/idolatrize" was an insurection cry over Canaanites where Yahweh orders the Israelites to destroy all idols of Canaanites instead of valuing their silver/gold content. El/God had no desire to repress worship, and their priests accepted offerings and sacrifices, so why not idolatry.
"Honour thy father/parents" codifies law at the time that gave parents the right to have the state execute their children for "dishonour".
Just as all Churches today have as mission to maximize their power through alliance with state/authority/hierarchy, so have all religion through time. A cult is simply a religion without state approval. God exists without church corruption. Prayer has no measurable effect, but Abrahamic religions being rooted in a lie could be one explanation. Still, that evil exists, doesn't imply that humanism/principle doesn't exist, just that you individually have the power for evil, and tyranny/autocracy has power because you are deluded to allow/tolerate it, and evil happens from the greed and desperation it fosters. Evil exists because we are too collectively stupid and gullible to organize ourselves around evil.
https://www.naturalfinance.net/2022/11/the-invention-of-truth.html
If this were multiple choice, then I would go with #2.
Assuming Christianity and that the lore was real there's more fundamental questions.
Can you perceive the universe accurately and fully? If good and evil exist, are you accurately observing them?
If this world is like an illusion and eternity will be in heaven or hell, what does it mean to do good or evil here on earth? You commit evil and it will propel you towards hell, the"real", while the people who suffer from your evil fare better here in the "illusion." It's like evil is when someone kills their own soul, and has less to do with the literal consequences here in this universe.
Related the the first question, what about the fact that their god is literally defined as good and is essentially an Eldritch being that exists within the very unfolding of history itself? Stepping into this lore and trying to trap this thing with a simple, elegant rhetorical cage is like... trying to catch Cthulhu with a cage.
If you guys pray to me, I promise to notice you and pay attention. Which is more than you can say for any god.
(You have to do it out loud and in front of me though.)
Kneeling bags my nylons.
If anyone actually cares, this is the muslim answer to how a good God can allow evil and why humanity was created with all its flaws
It's an important question and worth taking the time to watch the video
Able and willing are fine and dandy until you have free will to deal with. You can tell people the right way to be all day, but in the end you gotta come down and throw some bitches around like rag dolls. We all assume god has the ability to do whatever they want, but we never think they have rules they are forced to exist by. Rules that keep the very fabric of existence from unraveling. In short, if god is capable of being omnipresent, and omnipotent, then our ability to express free will is in danger because they could just force us to be whomever they choose, with how things are setup it makes a lot more sense gods a smoker, drinker, pissed off, and being forced to fix this shit manually while a ton of shit heads keep trying to force everything in the wrong direction. Gods an admin in a free will zone, and has specific abilities they can rely on to resolve issues, but it can take time like cleaning up the streets of rancid goulash vendors. But really, that implies we are all just visiting a zone, and once we leave it gods not god, just an admin in a zone we are no longer a part of.
No. Not all "evil" is caused by people, and not all bad things caused by people were done with that intention. There is a very large margin for "less evil", where natural disasters could just not exist and people with good intentions get the information they need to not do something bad accidentally.
Yes, people often overlook that evil (in the form of suffering) exists in our world without free will as a cause when trying to respond to the problem of evil like this. Why would our world be designed to require suffering? And even if we were willing to concede that the ideal world should have some suffering, surely it should have less than this one, right?
Also, this response takes for granted that free will exists when most people in my experience concede that we live in a deterministic world. So if some version of free will exists that people nonetheless act predictably, and have their nature pre-determined rather than chosen, why would an omnipotent, all-knowing, benevolent god not choose a nature for them that would avoid inflicting suffering in their expression of free will? I haven't found a good answer to these, if one is even possible.
Safety is that which protects but does not bind
Tyranny is that which binds but does not protect
Why not able and willing, but just doesn’t?
I’m willing to go for a walk today to burn a few calories. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna.
Wouldn't that make you unwilling?
Not at all. Willing means that I want to do something. Unwilling means that I don’t want to do something.
Just because I want to do something, doesn’t mean I will do that thing.
I’m willing to sit here and continue editing this post with examples to further illustrate my point, but I have to go to work soon.
Edit: Oof. Now I remember why I refrained from starting a lemmy account for so long. Appreciate the refresher.
One of my favourite discussions of the problem of evil is the chapter below. It's a discussion between two brothers regarding God and suffering in the world if the end result is eternal paradise. TW: child abuse, suffering and death. Children are used in the argument specifically because they don't deserve suffering, they are innocent according to Dostoyevsky (I easily agree).
It's heavy but worth the read imo, and not unnecessarily graphic.
Dostoyevsky lived before the baby hitler question. If you knew without a shadow of a doubt a child would become the a very evil person, is it more ethical to kill the child now and spare the suffering of those later, or not kill the currently innocent child but condemn the others. A child does not deserve to suffer for the same reasons an adult does not deserve to suffer. No one inherently deserves to suffer and have evil happen. However, free will can lead to suffering and oppression.
What god and satan was Epicurus talking about here? Just curious what idea of an omnipotent, omniscient, loving god existed about 300 BC. My little Roman mythology knowledge has their gods closer to Greek gods: limited in power, easily fooled, and extremely flawed.
AFAIK there is no proof that this paradox was actually coined by Epicurus, despite later being attributed to him. Epicurean philosophy holds that the gods exist, but don't interfere with anything, so it's pointless to fear or appease them.
Hence, it would be a later invention attributed to him.
I have a few points to this.
The first being) he already has, it’s called heaven, a world without harship, strife, and evil.
The second being) the prevention of evil and the complete elimination of evil are different goals. If we are truly made in the image of god as the bible says, then god geels similar emotions to us as well. So the ultimate answer to the question of why hasn’t he is: he doesn’t want to.
The third being) who is to say he has not already, and the goal post of what is evil has moved? How could we possible know god did not create a world before this, with “true evil” only to restart it into this world.
The fourth being) in a world with free will and no evil, the definition if free will completely changes, so therefore he could, but it would not be the same to him or to us.
The simple solution is that there is no "evil."
I like the story The Egg by Andy Weir. It gives an example of that idea.
Alan Watts also talks a lot about that sort of thing.
You remind me of my wife.
When we met, she introduced me to lots of short stories that made me reconsider my perspective on things. This was one of them. She still makes me reconsider my convictions whether I want to or not. I sure do love her for that.
No one can convince me that abuse is not evil. Is it common? Banal? Sure. Is it good? No. Never. Causing truama is evil. I don't think there's a valid argument that it isn't.
Not that I necessarily agree with it, but having listened to a lot of Alan Watts, he gives the impression that he somewhat believes in a just universe.
To him every experience and every challenge is an opportunity for growth, especially the most difficult experiences.
He posits a belief in a karmic universe, where every lifetime of experiences and choices leads into the next lifetime of experiences and choices.
It rubs me wrong, because that type of thinking, to me, stems from the childish belief in a just universe, that good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people.
Therefore, if terrible things are happening to you, then you must deserve it because your karma created your lifetime of circumstances...
Nice premise but I can't stop giggling that the universe created for the child to mature has to be hellscape for parent, for all those instances of the same talks they will be having util that day (finally) comes.
I do love that concept. I don't think it removes evil, just shifts its perspective
Oh no. You have to want to believe and repent ... But that's free will, which is also ... Frowned upon
Frowned upon by whom? I seem to recall Christian theologians jumping through logical hoops for millennia to preserve both free will and an all-knowing God, specifically so that it would be just when God tortures people for eternity for sinning.
Well the theological explanation is that what we consider evil or suffering is just a necessary function of God's world.
Would a world truly without any sort of hardship or strife be worth living in?
Would a world truly without any sort of hardship or strife be worth living in?
Would a world truly without any sort of hardship or strife be worth living in?
Of course. You can challenge yourself without hardship. It would just be on your own terms instead of whatever bullshit other people or circumstance is constantly throwing at us.
Found the ceo
Isn’t what you described heaven?
The argument still stands; god is either incapable of creating a universe without suffering where you can still derive meaning, or is not willing to create one.
The only potential explanation I could see is the absolutes in which we set things. The paradox of an ultimate being is flawed (could god microwave a burrito so hot that not even he could eat it?) because it presumes that the being exists within the confines of two opposing absolutes cannot coexist; something either is, or isn’t. However, if some being would be considered supreme in our universe, it could be because it exists outside of its confinements, meaning that conflicting realities (paradoxes) are possible - the burrito is both not too hot for god to eat, while at the same still being too hot for him to eat. It’s just not possible for us to comprehend because in our understanding of reality, something cannot exist simultaneously as the opposite of what we’ve recognized it as. It would mean it either no longer fits the definition, or reality exists in a way that’s so much more complicated at the same time.
It’s often expressed in multiverses in a lot of fictional settings; a universe where god made a burrito so hot not even he could eat it, and a parallel universe where he could, and both universes are both observable and interactable with god. But even then, it’s kinda brain-melting, like some kind of nuclear-hot brain burrito.
I’m sorry, I’m kind of hungry.
Voltaire has a great novella called Candide about a philosopher who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. It's hilarious.
Why is a Greek philosopher from before Jesus was born saying "God" like it's one person's name and saying he's omnipotent?
This seems made up.
You're either trolling or are critically stupid, but I'll bite. Concepts of and discussions about monotheism, the capabilities of deities, and the relationships between humans and their deities predated the birth of Jesus. Shocking, I know. There is no contemporary evidence that Epicurus said or wrote this quote - rather, it seems that it was an attempt to boil down some of his thoughts that was eventually written in English by Hume, who likely would have anglicized the word for a monotheistic deity as 'god'.
So Hume made it up. Thanks.
He was talking about small-g gods necessarily being imperfect in context of the Greek pantheon, but the quote was adapted to monotheistic/Abrahamic philosophical frameworks by biblical scholars centuries later since the underlying reasoning is also applicable to Yahweh.
Not a direct quote, since ol' Epicurus didn't speak English. No quote marks, Drag'll notice. And I might've inserted the capital G myself, typing it. It's a God-damned habit, sorry.
I'm not trolling and this is not intended to make anyone angry.
<spoiler title>
You don't have any control over what other people believe. You can disprove them, humiliate them or assault them with a baseball bat and they will still believe what they believe. I know you're angry, but hurting people who did nothing to you doesn't make you right, it makes you an asshole.
- How do you know anyone here's angry?
- How does presenting a logical argument against the existence of god hurt people?
- How do you know the people this template is addressed to have done nothing to people here?
Yeah, hurting people doesn't make you right. Being right does.
Can't make sense of your comment. I'm in good spirits, and all the other comments seem chipper and coherent. Please, Stinky, try to be more amusing, interesting, outrageous, or profound.
Stop Patrick, you are scaring him!
That's the fundamental tenet of faith: belief without, or in contradiction of, proof.
Faith, by definition, cannot be reasoned into, therefore canot be reasoned out of.
The problem is that there a various faiths that require evangelism which harms others or require harm, e.g. denying health care.
There are no faiths which require denying people health care. Cruel individuals interpret their faith that way, but it's not the faith responsible for it, it's the individual.
But my point is that even if you find a truly evil faithful person and show them a long list of data proving that their actions are immoral, you can't make them stop believing. You don't have control over it. You're trying to have vengeance on a belief by checkmating one of its believers and that can't work; you're just hurting someone in vengeance.
