In my quick searching, I can't find much info on it. It seems that he made it in response to the idea that there were Greek gods that were concerned with humanity's wellbeing and actively took a positive part in our existence. His ideas don't apply to one religion or even try to say that there is no god, rather he is just saying that the gods are too busy / unconcerned with humanity's wellbeing which was not the common view of the period.
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There can't be free-will if there wasn't any choice. If there there are choices, there is the potential for evil choices.
So it's kinda like saying "if God is all powerful could He create a mountain on Earth but also make it so the Earth is a perfect sphere?" It's just pointing out that a planet that's a perfect sphere wouldn't have mountains and a planet with mountains are not perfect spheres. Which isn't exactly deep philosophical thought that needs a flow chart.
Also if proving something about religion is paradoxical proves that religion is wrong, by the same logic proving something about math or science is paradoxical proves those are wrong. Halting Problem? Math is false! Schrodinger's Cat? Physics is false!
But outside atheist dogma, most people accept there are things about the universe that are paradoxical. The Halting Problem doesn't mean we should discard mathematics, Schrodinger's Cat doesn't mean we discard Physics. Following this trend means that all of the efforts by atheists to point out paradoxes in religion doesn't accomplish anything.
There can’t be free-will if there wasn’t any choice. If there there are choices, there is the potential for evil choices.
I am hungry. I decide to make myself a sandwich, with peanut butter, and one of the following:
strawberry jam
honey
grape jelly
None of these are evil, yet they are choices.
Also if proving something about religion is paradoxical proves that religion is wrong, by the same logic proving something about math or science is paradoxical proves those are wrong.
This is a false equivocation. Proving that a fundamental part of a religion (such as a tri-omni god) to be paradoxical means everything built off of that idea is wrong. The same applies for math and science, but when large swaths of things in math and science get proven wrong because of a underling assumption that later turned out to be false, we get closer to the truth. That's how we went from a geocentric model, to a heliocentric model, to the understanding that there isn't any discernible center to the universe.
Halting Problem? Math is false! Schrodinger’s Cat? Physics is false!
Those problems do not prove math and science to be false, as they do not challenge fundamental assumptions.
Following this trend means that all of the efforts by atheists to point out paradoxes in religion doesn’t accomplish anything.
Nah. This paradox quite clearly debunks the idea of a tri-omni god presiding over the universe. This is a fundamental assumption within some major religions, and it's wrong. By extension the ideas built off of it are wrong.
Do the same for math and science and you'll lead to new discoveries.
The sandwich analogy doesn't work, because there are not enough variables to cause significant chaos to the point of where a will can be proven. Will implies thinking and decision making in a chaotic environment so as to assume intelligence, but being only able to choose three choices and starting out with 2 demonstrates no more intelligence then random chance.
Intelligent choice is part of free will, because otherwise it is only instinctual choice. But intelligence by nature allows malevolence, because it allows you to create choices where there were none.
Also, a paradox doesn't disprove the existence of a god - if anything, any omnipotent being of any sort would be paradoxical by nature, as omnipotence can only exist in a paradoxical state. If you're wondering how that could be possible, light is a good example - it is both a wave and a particle, and yet it exists. Being a paradox doesn't exclude the possibility of something existing.
Lastly, omnipotence doesn't exclude desire. For example, if you suddenly gained omnipotent abilities, would you actively use them all? Would you change certain things? Would you change yourself? Would you create something?
Why?
The same questions could be true for any omnipotent being.
All that said, this simplified chart is missing some options, but then condensing philosophy into a simplified chart is already quite reductivist anyhow.
You make the claim that a will relies on some idea of chaos, which definitely requires some actual explanation.
The amount of choices one has is irrelevant in the comparison to random chance. If the person uses reason to decide for one of several options, they, in the most common sense, clearly have acted out of free will. Assuming that a free will exists in a physical universe, but we're in metaphysics anyways.
I am not sure what it even means to create choices where there were none. If you end up making a decision, then it clearly was an option to begin with, by the definition of what that word means.
What pointing out the paradox here entails is that amongst the presumptions we made, at least one of them must be false. The argument used in the OP does not disprove the existence of some divine being at all and it's not trying to. It's trying to disprove the concept of a deity that has the three attributes of being all-powerful, all-loving and all-knowing. In the argument given, it is shown that at least one of these attributes is not present, given the observation of evil in the world.
Your comparison to light being described as a particle and a wave is to your own detriment. The topic of this duality arose in the first place from the fact that our classical particle based models of the universe began to become insufficient to correctly predict behaviours that had been newly observed. A new model was created that can handle the problem. The reason this is a weak argument here is that no physicist would ever claim that the models describe the world precisely. Physical models are analogies that attempt to explain the world around us in terms humans can understand.
In your last question, you make the mistake of misunderstanding the argument once again. You grant the person omnipotence and leave it at that. The argument is arguing about the combination of omnipotence, omniscience and all-lovingness. The last of these deals with your question directly, explaining the drive to make the changes in question. The other two grant the ability to do so without limitation.
This chart isn't reducing that much at all. It's explaining a precise chain of reasoning. It may or may not be missing some options, but you haven't named any so far that weren't fallacies.
Ah, you're right, I did forget the "all-loving" part actually. My bad. I thought you were talking about the Christian Trinity paradox.
As for chaos needed for determination of will, that's because will requires intelligence. A controlled environment doesn't lead to intelligent choice but rather patterned outcome. ChatGPT is a good example of this
As for the "all-loving" part, an argument could only be made for that, from my perspective at least, depending on how you define "love" here. If they sees us the same way we see creations we make and love, then it would explain to some degree why the suffering is still allowed. If you build a rugged all terrain vehicle, you might love what you made, but it's purpose would still be go out there and get scuffed up. I know it's not the same for us - a vehicle ≠ a person - but to an omnipotent creator being, it could be the same point of view that we have towards a vehicle. In which case it would fit that condition on a technicality.
I do have a question though - what would it mean if he made both a universe where suffering exists, and one where none does, simultaneously? What would that entail?
As for chaos needed for determination of will, that’s because will requires intelligence. A controlled environment doesn’t lead to intelligent choice but rather patterned outcome. ChatGPT is a good example of this
So what turns a controlled environment into a chaotic environment? And what is the problem with a patterned outcome? Intelligence was still used, so what do the results matter?
This all seems quite arbitrary.
As for the “all-loving” part, an argument could only be made for that, from my perspective at least, depending on how you define “love” here. If they sees us the same way we see creations we make and love, then it would explain to some degree why the suffering is still allowed.
The problem with this is than an all loving, omni-benevolent being not just has love for all, but maximal love for all, which contradicts the notion of willingly allowing suffering to exist in any form.
it could be the same point of view that we have towards a vehicle.
"You are so lowly that it is permissible to harm you" is not the point of view of an omni-benevolent being.
So what turns a controlled environment into a chaotic environment?
Honestly, don't know. Maybe mathematicians do, but I imagine it's a philosophical question. The only agreed upon thing would be that significant varied complexity is what is needed to be determined a chaotic environment, philosophically. How significant would be the disagreement.
And what is the problem with a patterned outcome? Intelligence was still used, so what do the results matter?
Well, we're still trying to determine exactly, precisely is "intelligence". But ChatGPT is definitely not intelligent, that I do know. I think Google really helped elucidate that point recently to Americans.
The problem with this is than an all loving, omni-benevolent being not just has love for all, but maximal love for all, which contradicts the notion of willingly allowing suffering to exist in any form.
Again, that depends what kind of "maximal" love. You have maximal love for your parents for example (assuming you had good parents), but that's definitely not the same as romantic maximal love.
If there's a God and they created everything, well, I assume the "maximal love" would be akin to a human creating something and loving that creation. Considering the massive difference between an omnipotent being and a mortal human, I'm hesitant to even say it's similar to a human and self aware robot.
The only agreed upon thing would be that significant varied complexity is what is needed to be determined a chaotic environment, philosophically. How significant would be the disagreement.
Ok, then let's assume there is a sufficient number of choices to be deemed chaotic. You have 1000 condiments for the sandwich at your disposal, it's chaotic. However none of them are options which are evil.
The rather arbitrary requirement of chaos is present, a choice is still at hand meaning free will is still present, all without evil.
Well, we’re still trying to determine exactly, precisely is “intelligence”. But ChatGPT is definitely not intelligent, that I do know. I think Google really helped elucidate that point recently to Americans.
So do humans who play tic tac toe lack intelligence? There is a finite and very small number of choices a player can take. It's a patterned outcome.
Ok, then let's assume there is a sufficient number of choices to be deemed chaotic. You have 1000 condiments for the sandwich at your disposal, it's chaotic. However none of them are options which are evil.
That's not varied complexity, that's still just a lot of one thing - condiments.
Significant varied complexity would be more of 5 condiment choices, 2 bread choices, 3 ham choices but 1 might be expired even though it's your favorite, 3 vegetable choices, peanut butter, 3 jam choices.
And then between all that, other things are going on too. You might suddenly decide you don't want sandwich. A roach is wondering if it should scurry across the bread you laid down or near your feet, possibly causing you to injure yourself with the knife. A painter who was painting something dark red may knock accidentally on your door leading to a misunderstanding. And more.
None of these choices are evil, but they can lead to suffering or the potential to make a bad choice. And then there's still defining "evil". Would eating ham be evil? What about the jam? It could involve minor deforestation for monoculture - is that evil? Is spraying crops with pesticides evil? What about GMOs? These are things that depending who you ask, range from evil, bad, neutral, to good.
So do humans who play tic tac toe lack intelligence? There is a finite and very small number of choices a player can take. It's a patterned outcome.
False equivalence. The thing is, you can play tic-tac-toe without intelligent decision. You could win a game through sheer randomness by just flipping a coin (heads = x, tails = o) and randomly picking a square. Want to take it further? You can draw the # on ground in the autumn, and leaves could just fall in place (red vs yellow) and form what looks like a game of tic tac toe. You don't need intelligence to play tic tac toe, even though an intelligent being is capable of playing tic tac toe. You do need intelligence to invent tic tac toe out of unrelated nothingness, however.
Significant varied complexity would be more of 5 condiment choices, 2 bread choices, 3 ham choices but 1 might be expired even though it’s your favorite, 3 vegetable choices, peanut butter, 3 jam choices.
This doesn't fundamentally change what I'm getting at. Of all the choices, none of them are evil. Yet they are still choices.
None of these choices are evil, but they can lead to suffering or the potential to make a bad choice.
Call it evil/suffering/sin/etc, the label is irrelevant to my point.
False equivalence. The thing is, you can play tic-tac-toe without intelligent decision. You could win a game through sheer randomness by just flipping a coin (heads = x, tails = o) and randomly picking a square. Want to take it further? You can draw the # on ground in the autumn, and leaves could just fall in place (red vs yellow) and form what looks like a game of tic tac toe.
I don't think you quite understood what I was getting at, so let me rephrase. An intelligent actor with free will and an unintelligent actor without it will both have patterned outcomes to games of tic tac toe.
So patterned outcome cannot be a deciding factor for what is and what is not free will.
I am hungry. I decide to make myself a sandwich, with peanut butter, and one of the following:
strawberry jam
honey
grape jelly
None of these are evil, yet they are choices.
If I throw a jar of strawberry jam at your head, is that not an evil choice? You chose to make a sandwich with that jam, but someone else can choose to do something evil in the same situation.
Those problems do not prove math and science to be false, as they do not challenge fundamental assumptions.
If you're saying that it's only because you don't really understand them. Mathematics was widely assumed to be complete, consistent, and decidable and then Alan Turing's Halting Problem came along and blew that out of the water. So it's been mathematically proven that not everything in mathematics is provable. Seems paradoxical to me! I guess that means the field of mathematics is just a weird superstition we should mock, right?
If I throw a jar of strawberry jam at your head, is that not an evil choice? You chose to make a sandwich with that jam, but someone else can choose to do something evil in the same situation.
You've missed the point of the example situation. Throwing the jar at a person's head isn't one of the available choices. The only choices available are ones that do not harm to anybody, and are in no way sinful. Yet despite that, there is still a choice, there is still decision making.
One my favorite books is Forever Peace, and in the book humanity has found a way to have digital connections directly into the human brain through a port at the base of the neck. The military uses it for remote control warfare drone warfare. The civilian population mainly uses it to connect directly into another partner during sex, which has the effect of feeling what both people are feeling mid-act. Eventually the protagonists find out that if people are connected in this manner for extended periods of time, they become "humanized", meaning they see all other humans as extensions of themselves, incapable of willingly harming other humans. They become pacifists to the extreme. The protagonists go on a fight against the government to humanize the entire world, and eventually they do so, ending all war and crime across the planet.
If free will was really so important to create us with, god could have done so in a manner similar to the humanized people from the book. They still have the ability to make decisions and chose things for themselves, but the option to harm others is never available. If god exists, they could have done something like that, maintaining this need for free will.
So it’s been mathematically proven that not everything in mathematics is provable. Seems paradoxical to me!
That's not a paradox. Just because some things can't be proven doesn't mean everything can't.
I guess that means the field of mathematics is just a weird superstition we should mock, right?
No, because nothing in mathematics requires everything to be provable.
Not a single one requires "all mathematical problems have a solution" to be a premise.
On the other hand, the false belief in a tri-omni god is in fact a prerequisite for a number of religions, and therefore are indeed weird superstitions deserving of mockery.
You’ve missed the point of the example situation. Throwing the jar at a person’s head isn’t one of the available choices.
You're missing the point of free will. Putting a limit on people's choices is the antithesis of free will. I can make the choice to use the jam to make a sandwich, I can sell the jam, I can throw the jam in the garbage, and yeah, I can throw a jar of jam at someone if I choose. Some of these options are better than others, but free will means I make the choice, the choice isn't made for me.
If free will was really so important to create us with, god could have done so in a manner similar to the humanized people from the book.
Free will is important since it's the essence of creation. If we didn't have free will we'd all just be an extension of God, not distinct beings. If there are no distinct consciousness, then it would be just God and nothing else. If there's no distinct consciousness then there's nothing really created. It would be all just thoughts of a single being.
For there to be distinct consciousness there needs to be the capability to make choices, which means there's there's the capability to make bad choices. For me to be incapable of throwing a jar of jam at you there would need to be an omnipotent being governing my decisions. But doing that would take away my agencies and destroy free will. Destroying things is the opposite of creation, which would be against everything God is supposed to be.
Just as we are capable of making choices, God is also capable of making choices. Choice is something that an omnipotent being should be capable of, right? God's choice to not interfere with our consciousness is inseparable with the creation of free will.
On the other hand, the false belief in a tri-omni god is in fact a prerequisite for a number of religions, and therefore are indeed weird superstitions deserving of mockery.
And that is your choice. God isn't going to stop you from making this choice. But is mocking other people's beliefs making the world a better place?
Putting a limit on people’s choices is the antithesis of free will.
There will always be limits on people's choices. I don't have wings, I cannot choose to fly. I don't own a nuke, I cannot choose to nuke something.
So because limits on free will are inevitable, they should be reasonable, which means no evil.
For there to be distinct consciousness there needs to be the capability to make choices, which means there’s there’s the capability to make bad choices.
As is demonstrated by the sandwich example, even when no evil choice is available, choice is still possible.
For me to be incapable of throwing a jar of jam at you there would need to be an omnipotent being governing my decisions.
As is demonstrated by Forever Peace, this is not the case. The mechanism for Forever Peace being that humans see others as an extension of themselves, thus being incapable of harming others, but there is no limit to other mechanisms that would do this.
Destroying things is the opposite of creation, which would be against everything God is supposed to be.
That would appear to be blatantly false. The universe constantly is destroying things. Celestial bodies get destroyed every day. Stars die, black holes consume, planets get bombarded with rocks from space. This planet alone has had 5 mass extinction events.
Not a year passes where there isn't some child starved to death or slowly killed by disease. Natural disasters wipe people's homes off the face of the earth and kill thousands.
The universe is an incredibly hostile place.
But is mocking other people’s beliefs making the world a better place?
When it is ultimately a force for suffering, yeah absolutely.
There will always be limits on people’s choices. I don’t have wings, I cannot choose to fly. I don’t own a nuke, I cannot choose to nuke something.
You can choose to fly because airplanes exist. Note how people can choose to use for transportation or use them to drop bombs or crash them into buildings with thousands of people inside.
Also nuclear weapons exist and people can choose to drop them on cities and many thousands of people will die.
It feels like you're desperately trying to miss the point to avoid having thoughts that conflict with your current belief (or non-belief if that's how you choose to term it)
That would appear to be blatantly false. The universe constantly is destroying things. Celestial bodies get destroyed every day. Stars die, black holes consume, planets get bombarded with rocks from space. This planet alone has had 5 mass extinction events.
Matter can't be created or destroyed and energy cannot be created or destroyed. Matter can be converted into energy (and vice-versa) but nothing is ever really destroyed. Do you consider this to be a religious belief simply because conflicts with your argument?
When it is ultimately a force for suffering, yeah absolutely.
How much suffering was caused by the religious oppression done by atheists like Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot? It's not just religious people that causes suffering. I'm pretty sure it's intolerance of the beliefs of others that the root of all of that suffering, which history has demonstrated that atheists are more than capable of. So I'm asking again, is your intolerance of the beliefs of others making the world a better place?
Also nuclear weapons exist and people can choose to drop them on cities and many thousands of people will die.
Other people have that choice. I do not.
It feels like you’re desperately trying to miss the point
Given that you seemingly intentionally missed the point about the things that I cannot choose to do, I'd say this is projection.
to avoid having thoughts that conflict with your current belief (or non-belief if that’s how you choose to term it)
This conversation has nothing to do with the existence of god(s), it instead has to do with the existence of tri-omni god(s).
Matter can’t be created or destroyed and energy cannot be created or destroyed.
This is a false equivalence. If I burn down a building, it's been destroyed even if the matter of the building still exists.
Do you consider this to be a religious belief simply because conflicts with your argument?
Are you here to have a serious conversation, or just waste time?
How much suffering was caused by the religious oppression done by atheists like Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot?
This has no relevance. You completely missed the point of everything I've said, I hope not intentionally. Because this line of thinking isn't coherent.
Nope I honestly don't know what your point is. You gravitate towards absolutes more than most religious extremists do. Like if you're not an omnipotent being with every power you can imagine then you have no choices? But then you also think that the fact that world is some primitive video game where there's only very simple A) B) C) style options it would be a paradise and you're angry at God because the world doesn't work like that. Personally I find it frustrating when a video game limits my options to that degree and the option I want simply isn't there. Doesn't feel like I really have a choice if I'm only allowed to do the things they were considered to be valid options by someone else.
Yeah having choices makes for problems, but those are our problems to deal with.
This is a false equivalence. If I burn down a building, it’s been destroyed even if the matter of the building still exists.
And the atoms from that burnt building will go elsewhere and allow for the creation of new life. Nobody ever teach you about the circle of life, Simba?
Because this line of thinking isn’t coherent.
I think we're basically done here. You're just rejecting facts that conflict with your inflexible world view now. Atheists have killed a great many people in history, that's a fact. You reject that fact because you want to believe that religion is the source of everything bad in the world. Can't face the reality that a lot of evil has been done without religion being a factor, and a lot of evil has been done by people that think of religion similarly to how you think of it. It's almost as if intolerance is the problem and it's the same problem if it's coming from a religious person as it is when it comes from an atheist. Being intolerant towards all other beliefs than your own doesn't make you better than others, even when if you do everything you can to deny that you have beliefs.
Like if you’re not an omnipotent being with every power you can imagine then you have no choices?
That is not even close to what I was saying.
But then you also think that the fact that world is some primitive video game where there’s only very simple A) B) C) style options it would be a paradise
This is an oversimplification of a very easy to understand thought experiment.
and you’re angry at God because the world doesn’t work like that.
I'm not angry at god, I don't believe gods exist. Are you angry at Thanos?
And the atoms from that burnt building will go elsewhere and allow for the creation of new life. Nobody ever teach you about the circle of life, Simba?
Thanks for this waste of time.
Atheists have killed a great many people in history, that’s a fact.
Sorry, forgot that implying atheists behave similarly to religious people is blasphemy to the atheist belief system.
Could you direct me to the nearest atheist confessional so I can confess my sins? But not one with Richard Dawkins, if I wanted to confess to a pedo, I'd just go to a Catholic confessional LOL.
So wait the argument is that yes, by human definition, God is evil, but that he thinks all the atrocities in the world are totally awesome? That doesn't make him less evil
More like, on the scale of mortal vs god, the things that are important to us either aren't important to god(s) or may be so insignificant to be actually imperceptible.
As a thought experiment, say you get an ant farm. You care for these ants, provide them food and light, and generally want to see them succeed and scurry around and do their little ant things. One of the ants gets ant-cancer and dies. You have no idea that it happened. Some of the eggs don't hatch. You notice this, but can't really do anything about it. So on, and so forth. Now - think about every single other ant you've passed by or even stepped on without even noticing during your last day outside the house. And think about what those ants might think of you, if they could.
Now an argument that a god is omniscient and all powerful would slip through the cracks of this because an omniscient god WOULD know that one of their ants had ant-cancer and an all-powerful one would be able to fix it. But the sheer difference in breadth of existence between mortal and god may mean that such small things are beneath their attention. Or maybe he really does see all things at all times simultaneously down to minute detail. We don't know. It is fundamentally unknowable to mortals. Our scales of ethics are incomparable.
We also don't know if the ethical alignment of a god leans toward balance rather than good. It would make sense, in a way, if it did. Things that seem evil to us are in fact evil, but necessary in pursuit of greater harmony. Or in fact even necessary to the very function of the universe from a metaphysical perspective. If we assume the existence of a god for this argument it leads to having to assume an awful lot more things that we can't really prove or test one way or the other. But one thing that seems pretty self evident is that the specific workings of a god are fundamentally unknowable to mortals specifically because we are not gods. We don't have a perspective in which we can observe it so any argument made in any direction about it is pretty much purely conjecture by necessity.
Ants are a bad example though as ants lack the physical capabilities to feel emotions, they don't have self awareness and may not even be able to feel pain. Also we didn't create ants and their properties.
It's an analogy, not an example. We are significantly further from a theoretical, all powerful, all knowing god than we are from ants. The scale of sentience from "inanimate object" to "all powerful god" is likely to have us mistaken for inanimate object. So the analogy serves its purpose, but of course the specifics are different.
The analogy is not good then. If we are talking about the Christian god, it is specifically told that he created humans and their properties. That is equivalent to us creating our own species of ants through genetic manipulation. Ants that feel pain and sorrow, plan for the future, form meaningful bonds with each other, make art and so on. Then we also (on purpose !) make it so some of them are depressed enough to kill themselves because they can't take the pain anymore. Make some die of cancer in a week-long, painful battle.
No ethics commission would ever let that experiment pass. Either god has nothing to do with the christian one or doesn't exist.
You can't, though. Or, well, you can say it all you want but that doesn't make it true. I'm pretty certain that cats and dogs and bugs also think they've got humans figured out and I guarantee you they definitely, definitely don't, because it's physiologically impossible for them to understand. They're just not equipped for it. Just like mortals wouldn't be equipped to understand the perspective of an immortal, all-encompassing being, it's impossible for you to accurately place yourself in that perspective.
The ant farm thing was a little hamfisted but I think the analogy still stands for the purpose I introduced it for.
And what does "balance" have to do with ethical behaviour without you begging the question.
It is a possible explanation for the existence of evil. As in, the post we're arguing in the comments of right now. Nowhere in there did I ever say "this is the way things are", only "this is a possible explanation for a question we cannot definitively answer".
If we assume the existence of god, we have to assume a lot of other things too" and...........????
Please explain what part of that doesn't make sense.
This is all theoretical anyway, if a god existed your understanding of them would be limited to whatever they decide you're able to understand of them anyway, so the argument is largely academic regardless of feelings or underlying truth. The point I was trying to make here is that the difference in the sheer scale of existence between a mortal and a god is such that we may be as ants to them. We possibly could not understand them no matter how hard we try - we're just not biologically equipped for it - and some things that we consider important may be so unimportant as to never even get noticed by a god. But none of this is provable or even falsifiable so it's all a thought experiment anyway.
You see, shit like this is why I think some of the Eastern philosophers like Xunzi hit the mark on what "God" is: God is not a sentient being, God does not have a conscious mind like we do, God simply is.
Of course, those people didn't call this higher being the God, they called it "Heaven", but I think it's really referring to the natural flow of the world, something that is not controlled by us. Maybe the closest equivalent to this concept in the non-Eastern world is "Luck" -- people rarely assign "being lucky" to the actions of <insert deity here>, it simply happens by the flow of this world, it is not the action of an all-knowing, all-powerful deity. But like I said, it's merely the closest approximation of the Heaven concept I can think of.
The side effect coming out of this revelation is that, you can't blame the Heaven for your own misfortunes. The Heaven is not a sentient being after all!
This is always bizarre because "evil exists" is taken as a given and I don't think it does. Evil is just a judgment call made by humans about the intentional and uncoerced actions of other humans; nothing less volitional than that can be argued as evil.
You can simply replace evil with suffering, or ig a christian context might say sin? The point is the paradox is a structure, if any choice of word makes it work, then it works.
All of these are points of view with no objective reality or meaning.
"Suffering" is a subjective experience that has no objective reality. Suffering does not "exist" it is a judgement about a condition made by the internal state of a living thing. It has no objective existence of it's own, only a description of a subjective state or feeling.
The real problem is starting with a false premise and expecting anything but absurdity at the other end.
Objectivity can by your own logic be subjective as it is a judgment about a concept made by the condition of general consensus. Have fun word smithing your way out of any conceptual discomfort or useful conveyance of thought related to the human condition.
Wasn't the forbidden fruit in the garden of eden originally a fig or date or olive or something? It was changed to apple in the later translations. Something like that .
The free will is more about choosing to follow god or not. So if everything god does is good and everything they want you to do is good, you have no choice but to do those things. So you live in a perfect world but are a puppet.
That's not how proof works at all. Proof shows that something exists, what would proof of nonexistence look like?
You cannot prove that anything doesn't exist, only things that exist have proof.
If I tell you there is a large purple dragon in my closet and then ask if you have any proof that I don't, you can see the idiocy of such a statement. Your god is just another purple dragon. A figment. I don't need proof that it doesn't exist (as that's nonsense) the extraordinary claim of a magical all powerful yet invisible and undetectable being NEEDS PROOF.
Any one single shred of proof is sufficient to show that something exists.
I like to hear myself talk. Look how I explain myself like a Bond villain.
Now I'm going to make some more things up in response to a comment about how I make things up. Behold my lack of self awareness! Quail before my hypocrisy!
I'm blocking you because you're a predictable, boring hypocrite, one of those people whose point is "whatever makes me 'win', even if I contradict myself elsewhere to 'win' again". Feel free to have the last word for others but I won't see it.
All religion is not about logic or reason, rather it is about identity. You can join a club for scale model trains, and you can join it for the only reason that you want to and because you enjoy it. You then identify as a member of the train club. It becomes part of your identity.
Religion is similar except it adds a dogma and doctrine that defines your entire world view. To lose this world view is to lose your identity. People would rather die than lose their identity because psychologically one’s identity is synonymous with their life.
The only way a person will lose religion is if they have decided for themself that it’s time for change. Much like an addict, it a personal identity change. You have to say to yourself, I am no longer an alcoholic or I am no longer a Mormon. There is no amount of convincing, rationality, evidence or influence that can change a person until they are ready and willing. It’s transformative and traumatic. You just have to accept those who are lost to it.
I don't think it's that God couldn't create a universe without evil, it's just there's a process for making us good AND retaining our freewill.
So he's letting us help to create a universe without evil...
Evil is necessary in this process, but evil is really just God "occluded" - Satan is in this sense working for and with God in this process of teaching humans about good, hence the line "God works in mysterious ways"... We don't know the process, which is why it's faith-based.
It's like yes, your parents could give you a lifetime of pocket money all at once, but they're not going to because you have to learn patience, self-discipline, and saving up for the things you want (or can afford). You have to make choices in that process to learn about those things.
Humans are temporal... God is not.
So for God, God created a world without evil in which humans have freewill... It's already been done, instantly for God.
But we don't live on the same temporal plain.
Claiming God can't do it, is like being the kid asking for ALL the pocket money at once. Parents could do that, but they're letting time and your own temptation teach you the lessons.
That's part of the mysterious ways. But in faith, outside of time, and with the right beliefs and choices, a world without evil where people in your life still have freewill already exists... It's up to you to live there in it, in time.
You're assuming that the creation of suffering is evil when God does it - however it could be that if heaven exists as a place in the future where everyone's all good with what happened...
...then it might not be evil when God does it, it might only be evil when humans do it (because we're not capable of doing it in a way that's consciously creating heaven (where everyones okay with what happened) as a result... We can't arrange souls like God can. We can't live or operate outside of, or beyond time like God can.
...also, not that anyone asked, but personally - I'm an atheist. I'm just seeing how far these arguments can go with provisos like heaven, God as a time lord, and souls/at-birth soul agreements.
Oh, also God can patch up or fix up, or factor in suffering humans create, because being able to predict that something is going to happen isn't the same as causing it. Eg. I know the sun is going to rise each day up until an expected sun-death... Even if humanity creates the ability to make the sun rise, it doesn't mean the sun is currently controlled by us. Yet it's still predictable.
Still, the (theoretical) fact remains that god knows about the suffering and lets it happen. Whatever the goal is, if he's omnipotent he should be able to reach it without having suffering. If he can't, he isn't omnipotent. If he doesn't want to, he's not good.
He mentioned before that maybe the process for making humans good and retaining free will necessarily requires evil to exist. It's possible that by definition, suffering must exist, not that God couldn't do it. Kinda like how, by definition, you can't make a four sided triangle; it's not that God wouldn't be powerful enough to do that, it's that a triangle requires three sides by definition. Maybe the incorporation of free will requires suffering, even suffering not caused by the choices people make?
A four sided triangle is a verbal misconstruct, because we chose those names to represent different objects - nothing to do with what god can or can't do. They could make all of us believe that four-sided polygons are called triangles, which fulfills the requirement you propose. On the other hand, free will can't "require" suffering, because a requirement would mean there is a rule god can't break, which would mean they are not omnipotent.
But it could be suffering is by nature what allows us to enjoy good. You can't have a human if the human doesn't know not good, because how would you enjoy what you can't appreciate? The rat utopia experiment kinda shows what happens when you introduce a biological being evolved for stressors to a perfect environment. And humans may already be going through something similar but not as bad in developed countries (the lower birth rates, increased depression, etc) as what happened to the rats in the rat utopia.
So essentially what you're proposing is not allowing humanity to exist, and that it's a good thing.
It's not an invalid argument, but do consider some might consider that in itself evil, which brings us to the biggest real question: defining "evil".
An omnipotent god could alter nature in a way that makes us able to enjoy good without needing to suffer. If they can't, they're not omnipotent. If they don't want to, they're letting us suffer unnecessarily, and they're not good.
You technically could, but surprisingly, a lot more people take issues with their entire personality, memories, and consciousness being altered than with their bodies.
Because again, that's what you are proposing as "good".
Don't see how that's what I proposed as good. As time wouldn't exist for god (implication of being omnipotent), there's no reason that suffering ever existed in the first place - no need to change anything on a running system.
True, but there could be a meaning or reason behind the suffering we still don't understand either way is my point, because we still don't understand enough of ourselves or the universe yet to know if it's the better choice either. After all, before the rat utopia experiment, it was assumed having literally every need met perfectly would lead to happiness rather than disaster. It could be that he's done both for reasons unknown to us, creating both our dimension with suffering and one where suffering never existed.
Or there could be no reason at all, and God is an omnipotent being that is neither good nor bad, much like the ancient Greek concept of the God Chaos - they just "are".
Yes, exactly. If there is a god, they definitely either aren't omnipotent, or they aren't good according to our definition of being good (as they ignore our unnecessary suffering).
But that does bring us back to if free will can truly exist without evil. If you're forced into a single alignment, would you be any freer than an AI programmed to not be evil?
The argument we were discussing was that god was either evil (as in not good) or not omnipotent.
Whether humans must be evil due to free will is another discussion entirely, and I would propose that free will is never entirely free and always limited by our perception and understanding of the world. If evil didn't exist, you would be as free to be evil as you are to ignore gravity. Also, most religions believe in a paradise free from evil, so does that mean you lose your free will once you enter?
Actually yeah, at least from what I've read up on such religions. In many cases, you lose free will in said paradise. But there's still debate on what exactly said after life is, as expected.
In some cases you don't go until some apocalyptic event happens either. Then there's karmic religions, which technically fill all the requirements in the chart but can obviously be perceived as unjust by us (those suffering now were bad in the past and vice versa). Hence why I mentioned at some point to some "first you have to define evil". Although I guess the real thing is maybe "first you have to define justice". If we humans can't still figure out what we actually want, kinda hard to define a benevolent omnipotent being.
For example, let's say everything starts from the get go as "good". Well then, "good" also doesn't exist, because there's no duality to compare it to. Even if God knew it was good, we wouldn't. Next, would intelligence be capable of existing? Some knowledge would inherently be "evil" even if it lead to good. What about evil through good intentions? When you eliminate all these factors, you're basically eliminating humanity as we exist, because intelligence is no longer possible; at least, assuming "evil" is defined as "anything with the potential to be used for evil" as well.
Now you could just say "well an omnipotent God could just eliminate any of those possibilities" but now with direct intervention there is DEFINITELY no free will. But then you might say "so they are not omnipotent", in which case a paradoxical creation could solve that.
God could make a parallel universe in which all this coexists invisibly with the "paradise" universe, and even another where no good exists too. But only 1 of these universes need God to reside for him, thus he would "exist and not exist" simultaneously. Some Christians have this interpretation when it comes to explaining heaven and hell, btw.
Epicuro is a good example of why God doesn't exist: the universe doesn't make any sense if God exists. It's nonsensical if you try to place any intent on it. If it's simply the chaos of the physical order of matter, then it makes more sense. It's still bizarre that anything should exist at all, but at least you don't have to do the mental gymnastics required to justify its existence in the face of an all-powerful deity.
obviously made by someone who hasn't read the first page of the bible (like most). 1 huge point missing, god created earth not the universe, and other gods exist in the bible but are never talked about. this information is within the first couple pages of the bible. some translations can also make this harder to understand.
Have you considered that maybe God, who is love according to the Bible, designed this universe to be a complete demonstration of love? How can you fully demonstrate love if you don't show what it means to love someone who's evil and considers you an enemy, or someone who doesn't even believe you exist, or someone who once thought they knew you but were being deceived by people with evil motives?
If God created this universe as a demonstration of love, then why the fuck is there sections of the book where he wipes out entire families with disasters because he got angry?
I have considered that. There is a lot of evil (or suffering) that nobody directly causes and especially not because they're evil. Why is there depression for example? Or cancer?
As for where it came from, it was all brought about with Adam and Eve's first sin, which infected all of creation with decay. You could write a creepypasta about that. Depression's a bit more complicated because it's a thing in the mind, and there's a case to be made that it's often more directly a symptom of a separation from God, knowing on some level that something's missing - but I don't think that can be said of all depression. Either way, it still ultimately stems from the first sin.
As for why it should exist for a time, it's again necessary to be able to demonstrate love in those circumstances. It's easy to love someone who's always having a good time, but it's divine to see your love and support help to pull someone out of depression, or to comfort someone who knows they don't have long to live. (This isn't just about the love God pours out, but also the love He inspires in His people.)
Why would a loving god punish unrelated people thousands of years later with cancer and such for a harmless sin that he must have known Adam and Eve would commit?
Why should sickness exist at all? Why can people die when killed? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why isn't life like Heaven for people who haven't done anything wrong?
That's the way it originally was, but sin messes things up. And it's in our very nature. Nobody can say they've done nothing wrong because everyone has at least one concrete sin they've committed, often several.
There's no such thing as a "harmless sin." It has to be black-and-white or else people will try to weasel themselves out of accountability ("I'm only lying, it's not like I'm killing anyone.") Similarly, you can't good-person your way out of being a sinner. Even if you could stop sinning all on your own, if you're not going to repent for what you've done, the guilt is still there.
...Also, as previously stated, you can't fully demonstrate love if you don't show what love is like in hardship.
The problem my agnostic ass meets with good ol' Epi is the disingenuousness inherent in assuming "Godly" rationale to "human logic" semantics. My dude, people can't agree on human meaning and I'm supposed to make assumptions on God?
Why test if It knows the result of the test?
Geez Epic Manster, I know they didn't have spring mattresses in your day but the mattress factory also knows the result my mattress should have gotten at testing but tested it anyways...because the testing provides the necessary shape.
I still maintain my agnosticism and keep my two extremes whenever I don't feel like just being sure it's all bullshit anyways:
If God exists, it doesn't care for our suffering for reasons wholly beyond us (like a greater suffering of its own and why not, it's shit all the way down).
God exists, cares, is a bit sad, but we're all fucking mattresses where the cosmos is gonna poke, prod, and simulate fucking atop of us until we reach the appropriate factory required settings.
I already had coffee tho, so the middle atheist ground is in effect; none of it real, nothing matters except trying to not be total cockwaffles so everyone else can enjoy their nihilism too.
I already had coffee tho, so the middle atheist ground is in effect; none of it [is] real, nothing matters except trying to not be total cockwaffles so everyone else can enjoy their nihilism too.
This might just be the most British summation of my own beliefs I've ever read.
The problem my agnostic ass meets with good ol’ Epi is the disingenuousness inherent in assuming “Godly” rationale to “human logic” semantics. My dude, people can’t agree on human meaning and I’m supposed to make assumptions on God?
I think the idea here is that this deity being perfect would give some sort of absolute underpinning to the universe, having been designed by an intelligent mind. If it's made in this systemic way, even if we don't currently comprehend it properly, given enough time, we should be able to figure out at least some of the rules, providing insight into the nature of things and the mind of the universe's creator.
I know they didn’t have spring mattresses in your day but the mattress factory also knows the result my mattress should have gotten at testing but tested it anyways…because the testing provides the necessary shape.
The mattress factory isn't claiming their process is infallible, though, and they have QC exactly because they admit this and don't want a factory defect to get out to customers. That's a big difference from the omnipotent, omniscient deity being spoken of in the paradox here.
God having different morals makes a lot of sense. If you're a super being that knows most people are going to end up eternally in a pleasurable afterlife at the end of the day, what's a little temporary suffering while we meet?
Just saying, going to work isn't so bad when I know I get to go home, maybe a grab a pizza with the money I earned on the way back.
