How we know about God

[Hobble]

the Problem of Evil requires a judgement call by a person, someone who is only physically capable of possessing a mere infintesimal amount of all possible information about what is good or evil. G-d by dint of omniscience has all that information and can act accordingly. in fact the entire “Problem of Evil” that people have discussed for millenia does not actually exist. there is no such thing, because men can never be sure that there is not a perfectly good reason for any of G-ds actions. the “Problem of Evil” therefore simply doesnt exist outside of an irrational desire to make ones tiny bit of information, the measure by which such things are judged.

this is formally expressed as a criticism of info-gap decision theory where in the estimate of a value (a conclusion based on the limited information a person possesses) in an unbounded system (all possible information) can be far from the true value arrived at with all possible information considered (G-ds omniscience). simply put a person cant draw a valid conclusion about the morality of G-ds actions because he doesnt have all the information that G-d possesses.

to attempt to draw valid conclusions, such as “G-d is evil” or “G-d is immoral” is the same then as finding faces in the clouds so to speak. it is not then a rational position, but one based on emotion.

I’m not drawing the conclusion that God is evil, but that God has indeed committed evil (if the biblical God is real), and that God has contradicted his own laws repeatedly. Why is this God divine, yet it can’t practice what it preaches, why is it so divine yet for thousands of year it could only solve problems through murder, torture, and other brutal methods? The Buddha was just a man, yet he solved huge problems without ever hurting a single thing, yet this “God” has to slaughter children in order to fix something? Why does a divine being use those methods to solve problems for thousands of years, yet than when he sends himself to earth (as Jesus) he preaches that eye for an eye is wrong, a philosophy that Buddha, Krishna, and many others figured out thousands of years before Jesus was born. Please tell me what justification God could have had for wanting children slaughtered, pregnant women ripped open (isn’t abortion against catholic teaching?)?

I agree with you that evil is completely a perceptive thing. There are certain acts however, that are morally wrong under any circumstance, murder, especially murder of children, has no justification, not for a human, not for a god.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Please tell me what justification God could have had for wanting children slaughtered, pregnant women ripped open (isn’t abortion against catholic teaching?)?

first let me say that this is the loaded language fallacy, the argument here is not that one has sufficient information to make valid conclusions about the morality of G-ds actions, rather the evaluative meaning of of the phrases “children slaughtered” and “pregnant women ripped open” are meant to sway an audience to accept an argument without an actual attack on the premises of said argument by appealing to the unpleasant images such language conjures in the audiences mind.

that said, nothing changes here, one still doesnt have all the information necessary to make the conclusion that G-d committed evil acts, He may have well been perfectly justified. one cannot know and therefore cannot draw a logically valid conclusion.

I agree with you that evil is completely a perceptive thing. There are certain acts however, that are morally wrong under any circumstance, murder, especially murder of children, has no justification, not for a human, not for a god.

so the murder of a child is morally wrong under any circumstance? laying aside the loaded langauge of the statement, there are child soldiers in many parts of the world, quite intent on murdering those with whom they war, or just have something they want. should then a peasant allow his family to be executed to avoid killing the soldier who just happens to be a child? what about children that rape, torture and murder? trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/weird/kids2/index_1.htmlas rare as it is, it happens. so i disagree with the idea that there is never a justification to kill a child. that is clearly false. there may well be valid reasons to kill a child as above and in the provided link. how then do you know that G-d did not have such a valid reason? men cannot know because they lack the possible relevant information and therefore cannot draw a rationally valid conclusion concerning the morality of G-ds actions.

unintentionally, by using loaded language, you have placed me in the position of either agreeing with you or opening myself to accusations of promoting what may be commonly considered monstrous behavior. though it is unintentional on your part, its effects are to generate an emotional outrage on the part of the audience by which the premise of an argument may be dismissed without a rational refutation.

 

[Hobble]

first let me say that this is the loaded language fallacy, the argument here is not that one has sufficient information to make valid conclusions about the morality of G-ds actions, rather the evaluative meaning of of the phrases “children slaughtered” and “pregnant women ripped open” are meant to sway an audience to accept an argument without an actual attack on the premises of said argument by appealing to the unpleasant images such language conjures in the audiences mind.

that said, nothing changes here, one still doesnt have all the information necessary to make the conclusion that G-d committed evil acts, He may have well been perfectly justified. one cannot know and therefore cannot draw a logically valid conclusion.

If an argument causes an emotional reaction it’s because it’s making you question your own sense of right and wrong somewhere deep down. To take away the brutality of the argument does nothing but make it easier for you to justify the crimes by taking away the humanity of it.

so the murder of a child is morally wrong under any circumstance? laying aside the loaded langauge of the statement, there are child soldiers in many parts of the world, quite intent on murdering those with whom they war, or just have something they want. should then a peasant allow his family to be executed to avoid killing the soldier who just happens to be a child? what about children that rape, torture and murder? trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/weird/kids2/index_1.htmlas rare as it is, it happens. so i disagree with the idea that there is never a justification to kill a child. that is clearly false. there may well be valid reasons to kill a child as above and in the provided link. how then do you know that G-d did not have such a valid reason? men cannot know because they lack the possible relevant information and therefore cannot draw a rationally valid conclusion concerning the morality of G-ds actions.

If you have the power to kill the child that is attacking your family, than you also have the power to disarm the child without killing them, than perhaps you can try to help them and show them love like Jesus and Buddha taught us to do for those who hate us. Besides, I find it incredibly hard to believe, that every child in an entire city was in such a position, including the unborn babies.

Are you expecting me to believe that God, the divine being who can flood the earth, create plagues, walk on water, and preform countless types of miracles, had no way of solving a problem other than slaughtering everybody in a vast area?

unintentionally, by using loaded language, you have placed me in the position of either agreeing with you or opening myself to accusations of promoting what may be commonly considered monstrous behavior. though it is unintentional on your part, its effects are to generate an emotional outrage on the part of the audience by which the premise of an argument may be dismissed without a rational refutation.

I covered this above.

 

[diggerdomer]

I agree with you that evil is completely a perceptive thing. There are certain acts however, that are morally wrong under any circumstance, murder, especially murder of children, has no justification, not for a human, not for a god.

This seems contradictory? If evil is completely perceptive, then we can’t claim that there is objective evil, right? Or, if there is objective evil, it’s not completely perceptive (subjective). Or am I misunderstanding you?

Regardless, I’d recommend starting with the Catechism para 309 to see what the Church teaches regarding God (who is all powerful and all good) and the problem (or perhaps better, mystery) of evil.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

If an argument causes an emotional reaction it’s because it’s making you question your own sense of right and wrong somewhere deep down. To take away the brutality of the argument does nothing but make it easier for you to justify the crimes by taking away the humanity of it.

a fallacy of this type when not accompanied by a refutation of the premises of the argument invalidates the conclusions and you have not attempted to refute the premises of my argument yet. the problem of course is that rational, logical argumentation cannot admit to a fallacy and be still be rational.

simply “taking away the brutality of the argument” allows us to dispose of emotional factors that really have no bearing on the rational substance of the argument. the arguement being, of course, that the Problem of Evil is little more than an illusion engendered by mans lack of information.

If you have the power to kill the child that is attacking your family, than you also have the power to disarm the child without killing them, than perhaps you can try to help them and show them love like Jesus and Buddha taught us to do for those who hate us. Besides, I find it incredibly hard to believe, that every child in an entire city was in such a position, including the unborn babies.

it seems you might not have read the link i provided, allow me to demonstrate that your statement

“If you have the power to kill the child that is attacking your family, than you also have the power to disarm the child without killing them”

is false.

The Unthinkable

Jesse Pomeroy was fourteen when he was arrested in 1874 for the sadistic murder of a four-year-old boy. He was quickly dubbed “The Boston Boy Fiend.” His rampage had begun three years earlier with the sexual torture of seven other boys. For those crimes Pomeroy was sentenced to reform school, but then he was released early. Not long afterward he mutilated and killed a 10-year-old girl who came into his mother’s store. A month later, he snatched four-year-old Horace Mullen. He took Horace to a swamp outside town and slashed him so savagely with a knife that he nearly decapitated the child. Because of his strange appearance—he had a milky white eye—and his previous behavior, suspicion turned to him. When he was shown the body and asked if he’d done it, he responded with a nonchalant, “I suppose I did.” Then the girl was found buried in his mother’s cellar and he confessed to that murder, too. He was convicted and sentenced to death, although a public outcry against condemning a child to hang commuted the sentence to four decades of solitary confinement

Mary Flora Bell wanted to “hurt” someone. She was an angry child, the product of an unsettled home in which chronic abuse was the norm. She had a friend, Nora Bell, and they often did things together. When Mary was eleven, she and Nora lured a boy to the top of an air raid shelter. When he fell and was injured, it was thought to be an accident. Two weeks later, the corpse of four-year-old Martin Brown was found, another assumed accident. Then police discovered notes that indicated that someone was taking responsibility—two people, in fact, who called themselves “Fanny and ******.” Then Mary showed up at Martin’s home so she could “see him in his coffin.” Two months passed and another local toddler, three-year-old Brian Howe, turned up missing. When Mary suggested that he might be playing on a certain pile of concrete, searchers looked where she indicated and found his body. He’d been strangled and his legs and stomach had been cut with a razor and scissors. The medical examiner believed it to be the handiwork of a child.

Willie Bosket had committed over two thousand crimes in New York by the time he was fifteen, including stabbing several people. The son of a convicted murderer, he never knew his father but revered him for his “manly” crime. Just before he was sixteen, his crimes became more serious. Killing another boy in a fight, he then embarked upon a series of subway crimes, which ended up in the deaths of two men. He shot them, he later said, just to see what it was like. It didn’t affect him. He knew the juvenile laws well enough to realize that he could continue to do what he was doing and yet still get released when he was twenty-one. He had no reason to stop

In 1964, when Edmund Kemper was 15, he shot his grandparents, killing them both. He’d been imagining this act for some time and had no regrets. The California Youth Authority detained him in Juvenile Hall so that they could put him through a battery of tests administered by a psychiatrist. Since the results indicated that he was paranoid and psychotic, he was sent to Atascadero State Hospital for treatment. There he learned what people thought about his crime and worked hard to convince his doctors that he had recovered. Although he was labeled a sociopath, he actually worked in the psychology lab to help administer the tests to others. In the process, he learned a lot about other deviant offenders.

Kemper was released five years later, although he remained under the supervision of the Youth Authority. His doctors recommended that he not be returned to his mother’s care, but the Youth Authority ignored this. After Kemper murdered and dismembered eight women over the next five years, these same doctors affirmed his insanity defense. In fact, even as he was carrying parts of his victims around, a panel of psychiatrists judged him to be no threat to society.

In 1998, 14-year-old Joshua Phillips bludgeoned his 8-year-old neighbor, and then hid her body beneath his waterbed. Seven days later his mother noticed something leaking from beneath the bed. Joshua claimed that’s he’d accidentally hit Maddie in the eye with a baseball. She screamed and he panicked. He then dragged her to his home where he hit her with a bat and then stabbed her eleven times. His story failed to convince a Florida jury, who convicted him of first-degree murder.

obviously a 12 year old with a weapon and intent to use it is as dangerous as an adult with a weapon and the intent to use it. so the argument that there cannot be a sufficient reason to kill a child is obviously false. there can be a sufficient reason based merely on the little information i possess, how much more so then based on all possible information?

Are you expecting me to believe that God, the divine being who can flood the earth, create plagues, walk on water, and preform countless types of miracles, had no way of solving a problem other than slaughtering everybody in a vast area?

im making the argument that you cannot rationally draw the conclusion that it was not the best way to handle the situation. it might well have been, our inability to imagine a reason is no barrier to there actually being a perfectly valid reason for G-ds actions

 

[Hobble]

a fallacy of this type when not accompanied by a refutation of the premises of the argument invalidates the conclusions and you have not attempted to refute the premises of my argument yet. the problem of course is that rational, logical argumentation cannot admit to a fallacy and be still be rational.

simply “taking away the brutality of the argument” allows us to dispose of emotional factors that really have no bearing on the rational substance of the argument. the arguement being, of course, that the Problem of Evil is little more than an illusion engendered by mans lack of information.

That is not what I’m arguing. I’m arguing that the God of the bible, is inconsistent and contradicts itself, even though the bible claims that this God is divine.

And I have no interest in disposing of emotional factors.

it seems you might not have read the link i provided, allow me to demonstrate that your statement

“If you have the power to kill the child that is attacking your family, than you also have the power to disarm the child without killing them”

is false.

I did click the link, but it lead to a site menu, I wasn’t sure exactly which article you were pointing out.

obviously a 12 year old with a weapon and intent to use it is as dangerous as an adult with a weapon and the intent to use it. so the argument that there cannot be a sufficient reason to kill a child is obviously false. there can be a sufficient reason based merely on the little information i possess, how much more so then based on all possible information?

There are so many other ways to handle a child with those problems other than killing them.

im making the argument that you cannot rationally draw the conclusion that it was not the best way to handle the situation. it might well have been, our inability to imagine a reason is no barrier to there actually being a perfectly valid reason for G-ds actions

My argument, is that if God is all powerful, all knowing, and divine, than there is no valid reason why it could only solve a problem with genocide.

 

[diggerdomer]

My argument, is that if God is all powerful, all knowing, and divine, than there is no valid reason why it could only solve a problem with genocide.

The Catholic Church does teach that God is all powerful, all knowing, and divine, but not that God commits genocide. It’s understandable, I guess, how some can interpret the Bible that way, but that’s not part of Catholic teaching.

 

[Hobble]

The Catholic Church does teach that God is all powerful, all knowing, and divine, but not that God commits genocide. It’s understandable, I guess, how some can interpret the Bible that way, but that’s not part of Catholic teaching.

So Catholic teaching takes the good and ignores the bad? God does commit and orders genocide several times. God orders the destruction of the Amalekites, Midianites. God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah, God floods the earth killing everything other than those that Noah saved.

You shall not murder, according to God, yet God murders and orders murder. You shall not steal, according to God, yet God orders Moses and his people to take the land of others. Envy is one of the seven deadly sins according to God, yet God states that he is a jealous God.

I just don’t get how people can follow something with so many contradictions.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

That is not what I’m arguing. I’m arguing that the God of the bible, is inconsistent and contradicts itself, even though the bible claims that this God is divine.

you did state earlier that G-d committed evil acts, how is this different than claiming that G-d is contradictory or inconsistent? i mean, how do you know this without making a logically invalid conclusion concerning the morality of G-d? i dont think you can without rational evidence for the position.

And I have no interest in disposing of emotional factors.

why not? i deal with all manner of non-theists and frankly they generally find emotional appeals to be non-convincing, suppose i said that you should believe G-d exists because He makes me happy. would you find that convincing? should you find that convincing? of course not. why then do you expect us to accept an emotional appeal? one either has rational reasons for ones beliefs or one does not.

I did click the link, but it lead to a site menu, I wasn’t sure exactly which article you were pointing out.

sorry, it worked for me, you can just google it though.

There are so many other ways to handle a child with those problems other than killing them.

sure, if you get to them before they commit some of these atrocious acts, i only mention it in refutation of the idea that there can never be a justification for killing a child. obviouly there can be. as distasteful as it sounds, self defense alone is a valid reason drawn from the limited information i have, much less the omniscience of G-d.

My argument, is that if God is all powerful, all knowing, and divine, than there is no valid reason why it could only solve a problem with genocide.

how do we know that it wasnt the best way to handle the situation? without adequate information, one only has the opinion, that there might have been a better way for G-d to act. that speaks directly to the main failure of the Problem of Evil, we simply dont know what G-d knows, there may be a perfectly valid reason that we dont know about for His actions.

im going to bed, i will reply in the morning.

 

[Jean_Anthony]

This thread is straying off topic. If you want to discuss why God did what he did in the Bible, take it to the Sacred Scripture forum. Thank you all.

 

[diggerdomer]

So Catholic teaching takes the good and ignores the bad? God does commit and orders genocide several times. God orders the destruction of the Amalekites, Midianites. God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah, God floods the earth killing everything other than those that Noah saved.

You shall not murder, according to God, yet God murders and orders murder. You shall not steal, according to God, yet God orders Moses and his people to take the land of others. Envy is one of the seven deadly sins according to God, yet God states that he is a jealous God.

I just don’t get how people can follow something with so many contradictions.

One way to know about God is through the Bible. There are many ways people interpret the Bible. Your interpretation is not coherent with the Catholic Church’s (and I am trying to tread carefully to stay on Topic, so please move further questions to the Scripture Forum is appropos).

 

[tonyrey]

From the strictly philosophical point of view we know God must be eternal and uncreated because by definition He is the Creator and Source of existence. He must be perfect because imperfection implies an intrinsic defect or deficiency or limitation for which there is no explanation. He must be good because of the immense value of existence. He must be immensely powerful and wise to create such a vast, complex universe with its creatures of unimaginably sophisticated and exquisite modes of activity. He must be just, merciful and loving because otherwise He would be inferior in these respects to creatures He has made!