Does Suffering Prove God Doesn't Exist? (New Peter Kreeft Video)

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No, it doesn’t. However it does prove that an all loving, all knowing, all powerful god is impossible to exist with suffering, as Epicurus philosophy says.
 
LibralAteoJesus said:
No, it doesn’t. However it does prove that an all loving, all knowing, all powerful god is impossible to exist with suffering, as Epicurus philosophy says.
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You must not understand the argument.

And can you prove that suffering disproves God?
 
bzkoss236 said:
You must not understand the argument.

And can you prove that suffering disproves God?
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I never said it diproves God, the argument of Epicurus disproves the existence of an all loving, all powerful, all knowing god with all the suffering. You can google for his argument, it’s very thoughtful, unlike what peter kreeft offers.
 
LibralAteoJesus said:
I never said it diproves God, the argument of Epicurus disproves the existence of an all loving, all powerful, all knowing god with all the suffering. You can google for his argument, it’s very thoughtful, unlike what peter kreeft offers.
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If it truly disproves an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving God, then how could it be denied? It has been around a long while, and likely seen by many theologians and philosophers, even Catholic ones. If it truly disproves such a God, then why do religions with such a God still exist?

His argument is flawed.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
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He is omnipotend, so he is able.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
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He is able, and willing.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
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These questions presuppose that in the previous two sets of questions that God created evil. Evil does not come from God, especially if God is the source of good. Evil, like cold, is a lack of something. Cold is a lack of heat, and evil is a lack of good. Humans were given the free will to choose to do good, or to do that which lacks good. If God intervened every time, then the gift of free will would be pointless, which would be contradictory to God, being perfect in all positive attributes, because every action has to have a purpose (pointlessness is a negative attribute).
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
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This question is irrelevant given that he is able and willing.
 
Suffering, in many forms, conforms us to Christ when we accept what we cannot change with trust in the Lord.
 
I haven’t seen the video yet, but I think I have a proper answer to that. 😃

Given that God Himself gave us the proper dichotomy between good and evil (and with it, the notion that suffering is evil) through the Bible and Sacred Tradition and whatever you want to put into the bundle, it’s not hard to recognize that the existence of evil (which is, first and foremost, taught by us by what we believe to be God) doesn’t disprove the existence of the being that explicitly told us what evil is.

If God doesn’t exist, evil falls into a relativistic standpoint, and that philosophical position about something of objective nature such as the dichotomy of good and evil is completley self-destructive; if we disagree on wheter something is good or evil, the discussion simply stops there. The reason to this is that the value of truth of the opposing preppositions either depends on the personal opinion of the proposer (which doesn’t lead us to a consensus) or to some sort of cultural relativism (which doesn’t solve the problem either, as a Western European will have different standpoints than a Middle Eastern for example, and the change of opinion of the masses can easily be subject to change under certain conditions). And to defend that there are objective morals on atheism implies to use certain principles, which are easily subject to change as well. Rejecting the objective existence of morals doesn’t solve the problem either, as you stop having a way to solve inter-personal conflicts, and you probably break your own intuition, which can usually lead to scepticism, which doesn’t allow you to have any principles for anything, as you ought to question them and your own scepticism (this was one of the things that made me stop being an atheist and eventually led me back to God… :rolleyes:).

So no, admitting the existence of evil and the non-existence of God is going to lead to a dead end. I mean, come on… Would God give us morals if they imply He doesn’t exist? 🤷
Now that I’m done, time to watch the video! 😛
 
LibralAteoJesus said:
No, it doesn’t. However it does prove that an all loving, all knowing, all powerful god is impossible to exist with suffering, as Epicurus philosophy says.
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Not really. Aside from the likelihood that the argument was misattributed to Epicurus (Carneades was a more probable originator of the supposed paradox) by Lanctatius, who thought Epicurus was an atheist (he wasn’t) modern philosophers like Kreeft, as well as Alvin Plantinga, have pretty effectively disposed of the so-called “Epicurean Trilemma.” You may disagree with their conclusions, but they have shown that the premises of the Trilemma need not be true (through a number of possible theodicies), and that is all that is needed for a dilemma or trilemma to collapse.

Epicurus’s own writings (“if several theories are consistent with the observed data, retain them all”), demonstrated that one should not rule out a Christian interpretation, solely out of a methodological materialism.
 
LibralAteoJesus said:
No, it doesn’t. However it does prove that an all loving, all knowing, all powerful god is impossible to exist with suffering, as Epicurus philosophy says.
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In Judaism, it is believed that BOTH good and evil derive from G-d. There is no battle between the forces of good and evil, between G-d and Satan and his minions. This is because it is believed that G-d is so truly omnipotent that even His not-wanting something, such as evil, can bring it into existence. Further, it is up to us humans to tame evil and replace it with good. This is not so much because evil and suffering serve a means to an end as it is the notion that we share in the creation of the universe, which G-d has intentionally created partially incomplete, “with holes.” Ultimately, evil is temporary and good enduring, but we have a role to play in deciding this.
 
StrawberryJam said:
Suffering does not prove God does not Exist.
Now you are left with proving God does exist.
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I believe the movie provides the evidence for Gods existence by showing that those who do not believe in God are acting contrary to the Godless reality they profess, for if there was no God, then there could be no morality. There would just be nature doing what nature does. For instance when a lion eats its young we do not say the lion is evil. The lion is just doing what lions do sometimes and vice versa if a lion doesn’t eat its young it is not considered a good lion, but rather just a lion doing what lions do sometimes. Yet human beings assign a moral component to the actions of other humans, but how can we do this justifiably if there is no authority for morality? No human sees another human as having the authority to tell them what is good and what is evil, and If the source of this authority is not found in humans then it cannot be found in society either. We cannot be said to be the source either because we are not perfected judges. Most of the time we tend to excuse our own behavior, so this only leaves two possible conclusions. The first is that there is a Being which exists - since the existence of a moral law would be evidence of order and order is evidence of intelligence- and that this Being is not human. The second conclusion would be that no such Being exists but then you cannot explain the existence of morality and our want for justice.

It’s ironic because you hear non-believers admit this when they say something isn’t a sin, and that it is only natural. What they’re saying is there is no moral component in the action and that its just nature doing what nature does. Yet there is a catch 22 and that is they cannot say something is morally good because things in nature are neither morally evil nor morally good. It is just nature doing what nature does. The problem with this is our conscience will not let us settle for this because our conscience gives evidences that a moral law exists since we would not have a conscience if one didn’t exist.
 
StrawberryJam said:
Suffering does not prove God does not Exist.
Now you are left with proving God does exist.
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Given that we’re speaking in rason-based arguments for the lack of existence of God, it’s reasonable to provide you the arguments that do point to the existence of God. If you can’t refute them all, then according to deductive reasoning, God does exist.

With that in mind, I’ll give you 20 of them to get you started. Good luck trying to bring them down! Otherwise, welcome home… 👍
 
LibralAteoJesus said:
I never said it diproves God, the argument of Epicurus disproves the existence of an all loving, all powerful, all knowing god with all the suffering. You can google for his argument, it’s very thoughtful, unlike what peter kreeft offers.
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It doesn’t. It’s not very thoughtful either… and it’s disputed if Epicurs even made such argument or was just pasted upon him later on.

In any case evil is not the same as suffering. In Classical theology Evil is not even a ‘thing’ but a lacking. Evil also depends on free will of creatures that indeed can choose to be and accept the good or deny the good. Also evil might have reason to exist for a greater good. So Epicurs argument alone disproves nothing. (I’m being super-brief here, but there are several books dedicated to the subject, like Brian Davis - The problem of Evil; Kreeft wrote about it as well and many others in the past and now)

In fact the problem of evil is hardly a problem (as I said philosopher Brian Davis wrote a book about it recently) on a logical level. Its power is more ‘emotional’, since suffering and evil play heavily on our emotions.
 
“Two things I ought to keep secret: love and suffering. For love is the love with which He loves me, or loves Himself in me, and suffering is the love with which I love Him…” (Chiara Lubich, Beyond Time)
:yup:
 
LibralAteoJesus said:
I never said it diproves God, the argument of Epicurus disproves the existence of an all loving, all powerful, all knowing god with all the suffering.
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That argument is badly flawed. It assumes that we are able to see all causes, understand all purposes and know all ends: in other words, it assumes that there is no God and thus begs the question.

It also redefines Man as having no free will; in essence it’s the argument of a juvenile delinquent who attempts to blame his parents for his own disordered bahavior.

You might want to listen to some of Peter Kreeft’s lectures on free will, fate, and the problem of pain.
 
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