Okay, I can partially respond to this. (I'm a satanist, so don't @ me over this.)
First, we're using mortal definitions of good and evil, which may not conform to what a god would define as good and evil. Moreover, if you say that god's will is good, and that everything that happens is the will of god because that god is all-powerful, then everything is good because that is what god wills. That means that, yes, the rape of children is good, because that was god's will. If god created everything and is all-powerful, then this is a logical conclusion.
Second, you can say that god knows the outcome, but that we don't. We believe that we have choice, but god already knows what we're going to choose, even though we don't know until we make the choice. This is determinism. Under this model, god is giving us enough rope to hang ourselves, and we condemn ourselves to hell, rather than god condemning us.
Sure, but if there's a god, and if that god is the only one, then it doesn't matter whether you choose to worship them or not, because they have absolute power over you.
This is fundamentally the problem that Christians create with their concept of morality, i.e., all morality springs from god, and if it's god's will, then it must be good by definition.
The problem with the argument is that evil is relative, and the relative knowledge of what is or isn't is something subjectively decided, not something inherently known.
We don't know if evil is relative, but you can follow the dilemma with different wording.
We don't like our wellbeing and our ability to make our own decisions taken away from us. We suffer, which is something we want to avoid in general terms. It goes beyond humanity, as many animals also seem to seek the satisfaction of their will (being it playing, feeding, instinctively reproducing, etc.) and seem adverse to harm and to losing their life.
So... If we are such creatures, it's natural we don't like situations and beings that go against this. We don't like volcanic eruptions when they're happening with us close the crater. We don't like lions or bears attacking us. We especially don't like other humans harming us as we suspect they could have done otherwise in many cases. We simply don't like these things because of our 'programming' or 'design'.
Problem? There are a few. The first is God asks us to like him when he's admitting that he is actively doing the things we dislike almost universally as human beings. That makes us fall into internal conflict and also into conceptual dilemmas. Perhaps due to our limitations, but nonetheless real and unsolvable to us.
Then you can argue that the way we are is designed by him, so why design something that is going to live, feel, think certain things as undesirable and then impose such things unto them? Let's say I cannot say that's evil, I at least can say it's impractical as it will certainly cause trouble to his mission of accepting him (and following him). If that obstacle for us is part of the plan, that's not for me to say, yet it is an obstacle in our view and experience. In human terms, all this might be classified as unfair or sadistic*, which is the reasoning in the guide and how you can follow it in this perhaps closer way.
Now, about this last part, while we can argue that *those terms arise from our own dispositions and might be different to other dispositions (aliens that do not experience pain, for example), is that enough to invalidate our perspective? Then what's the place of empathy, which I am assuming is also a part of God's gifts to us? What's the place of compassion, as written in many religious texts of supposedly divine inspiration? If we need to carry our dispreference, displeasure, dislikeness—suffering—and not to classify it as necessarily evil when the gods impose it to us (as it is our judgment only), then why classify it as evil in other circumstances?
I hope I am getting my new point though. What this all seems to conclude is that if the lack of respect for the suffering of the animal kingdom is not worthy of being classified as bad (for whatever reason, here I argued that because this comes to be only by our characteristics/disposition); if, therefore, we cannot say a god is evil for going against our wellbeing and against our ability to make our own decisions, then I fail to understand many other things that tend to follow religious thinking and even moral thinking.
You're getting too caught up in one particular concept of 'God' (why is it a 'he' even?).
Epicurus wasn't Christian. Jesus doesn't even come along until centuries later.
There are theological configurations in antiquity very different from the OT/NT depictions of divinity which still have a 'good' deity, but where it is much harder to dispute using the paradox.
For example, there was a Christian apocryphal sect that claimed there was an original humanity evolved (Epicurus's less talked about contribution to thinking in antiquity) from chaos which preceded and brought about God before dying, and that we're the recreations of that original humanity in the archetypes of the originals, but with the additional unconditional capacity to continue on after death (their concept of this God is effectively all powerful relative to what it creates but not what came before it).
If we consider a God who is bringing back an extinct species by recreating their environment and giving them the ability to self-define and self-determine, would it be more ethical to whitewash history such that the poor and downtrodden are unrepresented in the sample or to accurately recreate the chaotic and sometimes awful conditions of reality such that even the unfortunate have access to an afterlife and it is not simply granted to the privileged?
The Epicurian paradox is effective for the OT/NT concepts of God with absolute mortality and a narcissistic streak, and for Greek deities viewed as a collective, and a number of other notions of the divine.
But it's not quite as broadly applicable as it is often characterized, especially when dealing with traditions structured around relative mortalities and unconditionally accepted self-determination as the point of existence.
Would you be willing to provide more info regarding the sect you're referencing, for instance the name? I have a fascination with "original" gnostic/apocryphal beliefs, but this one is extremely intriguing & I want to learn more.
You probably already know about it, you might just not know that you know about it.
The core of the Gospel of Thomas is pretty clearly a response to Lucretius which then used Platonist concepts of the demiurge and eikons (essentially archetypes) to build on top of the Epicurean foundations regarding a belief in a physical body that would die and a mind/soul that would die with it.
You can see how the Naassenes by the 4th century are still interpreting the seeds parables using the language of Lucretius's indivisible seeds (writing in Latin he used 'seed' in place of the Greek atomos), while at the same time talking about the original man creating the son of man and then likening their ontological beliefs to the Phrygian mysteries around spontaneous first beings described as coming to exist like a tumor.
Saying 29 of Thomas even straight up calls the notion of the spirit arising from flesh (Lucretius's evolution) to be a greater wonder than flesh arising from spirit (intelligent design) before criticizing the notion of the dependence of the spirit on the physical body in either.
If you want to look into this more, I recommend reading the following texts in parallel with each other:
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura (50 BCE)
Unknown, Gospel of Thomas (~50 to ~350 CE)
Pseudo-Hippolytus, Refutations of all Heresies book 5 (3rd century CE)
Adding Lucretius into the mix as you look at the other two works will be the biggest "ah ha" you could probably have when interpreting Thomas and remnant beliefs preserved among the Naassenes. In particular, pay close attention to sayings 7, 8, 9 for a surprise, noting that 8 is the only saying after another beginning with a conjunction and that in both the parallel metaphors of Habakkuk 1 and Matthew 13 a human is a fish and not the fisherman.
The solution I have heard before that I thought was the most interesting would add another arrow to the "Then why didn't he?" box at the bottom:
Because he wants his creation to be more like him.
He's just a lonely guy. He made the angels but they're so boring and predictable. They all kowtow to him and have no capacity for evil (except for that one time). Humans have the capacity for both good and evil, they don't constantly feel his presence, and they're so much more interesting! They make choices that are neither directly in support of or opposition to himself. Most of the time, their decisions have nothing to do with him at all!
Humans have the capacity to be more like God than any of his other creations.
That would fall under the "then God is not good/not all loving". You described it as if it were a privilege, but the capacity of evil causes indescribable suffering to us and to innocent beings such as small children and animals. If God lets all of this happen just because he wants some replicas of himself or because he thinks it is such a gift to be like him despite it, he's an egotistical god.
Also, if he gets bored of pure goodness, blissfulness, and perfection, then it was never pure goodness, blissfulness, and perfection for him. Those things, by definition, provide eternal satisfaction. So he either never created that (evil branch again) or he cannot achieve those states even if we wanted to. If he cannot achieve those states even if he wanted to, if he lacks enjoyment and entertainment and has to spice his creation from time to time, then he's not all powerful.
Also, many people argue the necessity of evil as a requisite for freedom. If God needs to allow evil so we can be free, then he's bound to that rule (and/or others): not all powerful.
Would they have been predictable had they never been created? Is conceptualizing an entire universe the same as actually creating the entire universe so it can play out?
To nibble further at the arguments for God: free will is absurd.
If god is all knowing and all powerful, then when he created the universe, he would know exactly what happened from the first moment until the last. Like setting up an extremely complex arrangement of dominoes.
So how could he give people free will? Maybe he created some kind of special domino that sometimes falls leftward and sometimes falls rightward, so now it has "free will". Ok, but isn't that just randomness? God's great innovation is just chance?
No, one might argue, free will isn't chance, it's more complex than that, a person makes decisions based on their moral principles, their life experience, etc. Well where did they get their principles? What circumstances created their life experience? Conditions don't appear out of nowhere. We get our DNA from somewhere. Either God controls the starting conditions and knows where they lead, or he covered his eyes and threw some dice. In either case we can say "yes, I have free will" in the sense that we do what we want, but the origins of our decisions are either predetermined or subject to chaos/chance.
It's a long read and worth it, because it beautifully explores the theme.
But these are two quotes that summarize the main though:
God:
Why, the idea that I could possibly have created you without free will [is a fallacy]! You acted as if this were a genuine possibility, and wondered why I did not choose it! It never occurred to you that a sentient being without free will is no more conceivable than a physical object which exerts no gravitational attraction. (There is, incidentally, more analogy than you realize between a physical object exerting gravitational attraction and a sentient being exerting free will!) Can you honestly even imagine a conscious being without free will? What on earth could it be like?
And
Don't you see that the so-called "laws of nature" are nothing more than a description of how in fact you and other beings do act? They are merely a description of how you act, not a prescription of of how you should act, not a power or force which compels or determines your acts. To be valid a law of nature must take into account how in fact you do act, or, if you like, how you choose to act.
I don't think the excerpt you provided addresses the points I was making. What do we mean by free will? Presumably it's the idea that a person is able to make their own choices, and they're not being controlled by some external force.
On the one hand, yes, I can imagine a conscious being without free will - imagine a scientist could disconnect the nerves that control your body and replace them with a remote control, but the nerves which provide sensation stay - someone else is driving the car, but you still see and hear what's going on.
But that's not what I mean when I say free will is absurd. I mean the idea that we could act without reference to our past experiences, conversations, physical circumstance, DNA, isn't plausible. Yes, I like to eat fruit loops for breakfast! They taste good and I enjoy the sensation. I have "free will" to eat gravel instead, but I don't.
In the normal mundane world that's fine - we can say we have free will. In the case where we argue that an all knowing and all powerful God exists that's an issue. Because God knows every possible force and prior circumstance that will act on us, and he put those forces into motion. So such a God would have decided for us what will happen.
The following two are more relevant quotes to your points:
Mortal:
Well, are my acts determined by the laws of nature or aren't they?
God:
The word determined here is subtly but powerfully misleading and has contributed so much to the confusions of the free will versus determinism controversies. Your acts are certainly in accordance with the laws of nature, but to say they are determined by the laws of nature creates a totally misleading psychological image which is that your will could somehow be in conflict with the laws of nature and that the latter is somehow more powerful than you, and could "determine" your acts whether you liked it or not. But it is simply impossible for your will to ever conflict with natural law. You and natural law are really one and the same.
Mortal:
What do you mean that I cannot conflict with nature? Suppose I were to become very stubborn, and I determined not to obey the laws of nature. What could stop me? If I became sufficiently stubborn even you could not stop me!
God:
You are absolutely right! I certainly could not stop you. Nothing could stop you. But there is no need to stop you, because you could not even start! As Goethe very beautifully expressed it, "In trying to oppose Nature, we are, in the very process of doing so, acting according to the laws of nature!" Don't you see that the so-called "laws of nature" are nothing more than a description of how in fact you and other beings do act? They are merely a description of how you act, not a prescription of of how you should act, not a power or force which compels or determines your acts. To be valid a law of nature must take into account how in fact you do act, or, if you like, how you choose to act.
So the free will isn't as tied to non-determism as we like to think. This leads us to a false dichotomy. And you will have read correctly that Smullyan doesn't see the 'God' as all-powerful but rather more all-enveloping, the God isn't detached from the person as he's thinking. Also that the god image of the percieved Judeo-Christian faiths are a bit different than the God in a taoïst understanding (which Smullyan adheres to and thinks of as a more logical deistich model.
His main point is about the misunderstanding of determinsm, as in the following passage:
God:
It is interesting that you have twice now used the phrase "determined to act" instead of "chosen to act." This identification is quite common. Often one uses the statement "I am determined to do this" synonymously with "I have chosen to do this." This very psychological identification should reveal that determinism and choice are much closer than they might appear. Of course, you might well say that the doctrine of free will says that it is you who are doing the determining, whereas the doctrine of determinism appears to say that your acts are determined by something apparently outside you. But the confusion is largely caused by your bifurcation of reality into the "you" and the "not you." Really now, just where do you leave off and the rest of the universe begin? Or where does the rest of the universe leave off and you begin? Once you can see the so-called "you" and the so-called "nature" as a continuous whole, then you can never again be bothered by such questions as whether it is you who are controlling nature or nature who is controlling you. Thus the muddle of free will versus determinism will vanish. If I may use a crude analogy, imagine two bodies moving toward each other by virtue of gravitational attraction. Each body, if sentient, might wonder whether it is he or the other fellow who is exerting the "force." In a way it is both, in a way it is neither. It is best to say that it is the configuration of the two which is crucial.
Don't forget that not long before him Socrates was murdered by the state on the charge of impiety.
Plato in Timeaus refuses to even entertain a rejection of intelligent design "because it's impious."
By the time of Lucretius, Epicureanism is very much rejecting intelligent design but does so while acknowledging the existence of the gods, despite having effectively completely removed them from the picture.
It may have been too dangerous to outright say what was on their minds, but the Epicurean cosmology does not depend on the existence of gods at all, and you even see things like eventually Epicurus's name becoming synonymous with atheism in Judea.
He is probably best described as a closeted atheist at a time when being one openly was still too dangerous.
An atheist is someone who does not believe God exists. They don't need to have a positive belief of nonexistence of God.
Much like how a gnostic is someone who believes there is knowledge of the topic.
And an agnostic is someone who believes either they don't have that knowledge or that the knowledge doesn't exist.
So you could be an agnostic atheist ("I don't know and I don't believe either way in the absence of knowledge") or an agnostic atheist ("I don't know but I believe anyways") or a gnostic atheist ("I know that they don't and because I know I don't believe") or a gnostic theist ("I know they do and I believe because I know").
Epicurus would have been an Agnostic atheist if we were categorizing. They ended up right about so much because they were so committed to not ruling anything out. They even propose that there might be different rules for different versions of parallel universes (they thought both time and matter were infinite so there were infinite worlds). It's entirely plausible he would have argued for both the existence and nonexistence of gods in different variations of existence given how committed they were to this notion of not ruling anything out.
But it's pretty clear from the collection of his beliefs that the notion of a god as either creator or overseer of this universe was not actively believed in outside of the lip service that essentially "yeah, sure, there's gods in between the fabric of existence, but not in it."
The Epicurean philosophy itself was very focused on the idea that the very notion of gods was making everyone sick, and that they offered their 'cure' for people to stop giving a crap about what gods might think or do.
You can’t have free will without the option to choose anything. If you can’t choose evil you don’t have free will it’s just a semblance of free will. If you’d prefer a semblance of free will that’s valid
Can you do everything you want to, like fly by flapping your arms? No? Still you say you have free will. Can you buy a rocket and send it to mars? You cant? Still you say you have free will. Limited choices do not mean that you do not have free will.
Adding on to this, God is supposed to be able to know the future so at the moment of creation knows exactly how it'll all play out. Ignoring how this alone would mean many versions of free will wouldn't be possible, God could simply only create the people that would freely choose the right things. Why create those that He knows will just go to hell?
It doesn't. All I'm saying is that your assertion that free will requires that evil is a choice assumes the existence of evil in the first place. If God never created evil, then it's simply not something you could ever choose, just like an infinity of other non-things that you cannot choose. But that doesn't inhibit your free will.
Well I didn't choose my depression, it's origin is neuro-chemical. My free will and everyone else's would be perfectly unchanged if I didn't have said depression. Still I'm suffering every day from it and struggling greatly. How do you explain that?
Does "all powerful" really mean all? I mean, a lìfe sentence is only about 30 years. Since it's all just social constructs (and even if it isn't) the precise meaning of the word could different that you'd think.
Maybe god was all powerful until they created free will and found that they made free will stronger than themselves. But since god made free will, god is still all powerful.
Like humans making machine learning. We can only influence it, not control it. Does that mean we are not in control? No, we could simply pull the plug.
God could also simply pull the plug, but likely doesn't want to because we are their creation. It's only a last resort.
I agree that "all powerful" is an ambiguity here. For example, the famous "can he make a boulder so heavy he can't move it?"
There will always be paradoxes in the universe. So you'd have to go to each respective believer to figure out what "all powerful" means. Maybe making a utopia is impossible.
Philosophy is indeed fun, because philosophers know it's only theory. Religion is a lot more advanced than just theory. Religion is basically the first instance of quantum computing.
Every religion has it's own truth, but every religion is the only truth. Thus truth can clearly have different states.
Religion is all states at once, but depending on it's observer, it is only one truth at any given time and place. When two states interfere with each other, (when they get onbserved at the same time and place), you can get disastrous consequences, e.i. war.
All religions claim to be the truth, yet contradict each other. One religion believes in only one god while others believe in more than one. One religion believe this is how the world was created, then another says differently. If all religions can't even agree on the fundamental basics, then none of them are true. Moreover, scientific discoveries have already disproven many of the religious claims.
Indeed. Omnipotence doesn't mean to be able to do impossible things, thus God can be at the same time omnipotent and loving and create a universe in which evil exists, as it is a condition to freedom.
imo every religion ever is a cope. All of those elaborate ideas about supernatural beings and alternate planes of existence to somehow cope with the fact that one day the good man, and the evil man, will both die and rot just the same.
It feels incredibly unjust for good men to die the same way evil men do, and for a lot of people that's too much to handle. We as humans have such a strong sense of "fairness" that we attempted to structure our entire society around the idea of justice for all, and so by comparison nature feels cruel and unfair, you can either learn to live with that, or tell yourself really really hard that it's not the end :) after they die the good man will be happy! and the evil man will get the punishment he deserves!
now layer that with milenia of different ideas about what qualifies you as "good" and "evil" and you've got religion.
This is my personal opinion, and honestly I don't mind nor care how the other person deals with their existential dread, as long as they aren't bigots about their way of coping.
No specific religion, but I saw evidence of a beautifully designed, perfect "machine" all around me. I felt in tune with some sort of higher power, whatever you want to call it.
Wait, so experiences you have while disabling your faculties responsible for rational thinking should for some reason overrule decisions made while you're not under influence and in sound judgment? What kind of advice is that?
- Cats can speak English, dude, trust me. Once I got real high and totally understood everything this cat was telling me.
You don't need to experience bad things to enjoy good ones... They are separate unlinked things. Like you don't need to have tasted sour in order to have the ability to taste sweetness.
as a fellow psychedelics enjoyer - I'm an atheist. I can understand how psychedelics could cause you to become a believer of some religion or overall spirituality. But my man, you were on drugs. Yes they're great tools for self growth and really fun too, but everything you saw came from within your head. You've found within yourself the need for a belief that there's a diety or some sort of grand plan behind it all sure, but you did not find god.
