I'm leaving Catholicism

[SeekerOfTruth7]

Also, logical distinctions certainly do falsify divine simplicity (as does the Trinity and various other Catholic doctrines). You can;t say omnipotence and omnibenevolence are distinct and still claim divine simplicity. Clearly, we can conceive of being that is omnipotent but NOT omnibenevolent.

Assertion.
Please respond to Aquinas, Scotus, and Palamas on this. They thoroughly refute your view.

Read this paper and respond: (PDF) The Flexibility of Divine Simplicity: Aquinas, Scotus, Palamas, International Philosophical Quarterly 57:2 (July 2017), 123-139 | Mark K. Spencer - Academia.edu

 

[OrbisNonSufficit]

A limited freedom of actions is much more preferable to the almost unlimited freedom to cause pain, suffering and mayhem.

Preferable to what? For whom? Technically speaking we do not have “unlimited” freedom in that regard- we have full free will (we can want anything really), but we do not have all opportunities in the world. Will and ability are different things after all.

The pain must be logically necessary to achieve that desired “gain”. Each and every one of them. If that pain could be lessened or eliminated while keeping the same beneficial result - then the unnecessary part was gratuitous - and as such “evil”.

That is if we only take outcome into account. How we reach something is much more important then if we reach something. Way is more important than the goal. You see this not only in real life but also in stories, in games and such.

It would be your job (or that of any apologist) to show that each and every suffering will result in some “greater good”, which could not be reached, if the pain would be lessened or eliminated.

Not entirely. My point is that suffering already exists as byproduct of our free will hence each and every suffering has already served it’s purpose (or rather, because of that good there may be byproduct of someone wishing a bad thing and acting upon that wish).

Or you could examine the Holocaust, and show the “greater good”, and also show that if even one death in the gas chamber would have been eliminated, that nebulous “greater good” would have disappeared, too. This is a tall “mountain” to climb.

If you could prevent Holocaust but price would be that no one would ever be able to “want” or “will” anything, would you do it? It’s a strawman same as your position. We were given responsibility over things that do not matter so we might grow responsible about things that do. If indeed what matters is what comes after this life, then death is indeed not a high price to pay, neither is torture. To speak in parable, death and torture to those who have experienced pain in the afterlife is like child feeling pain when parents slap them in comparison to those being brutally tortured. Child thinks it’s the worst feeling ever and other children might as well think that too… but that is because they do not know what real pain is. Same way, we have no idea what real “pain” or “suffering” are. If we measure things by this world alone then yes, one can not excuse suffering nor any sort of discomfort… but that is not how we would measure things.

With things like God, pain, suffering and so on you need to look at bigger picture. You can’t life isn’t fair because you fell of a bike once, and you can’t say life isn’t fair because someone else did. You can’t say God isn’t omnibenevolent because he doesn’t prevent people falling off bikes… and same way, any earthly suffering is not end of the world really.

 

[OrbisNonSufficit]

To be able to “imagine and want” anything is not the “free will”. If you can “will” something, but unable to perform it, it is just “empty wishful thinking”. The problem is the almost unlimited ability to ACT on that will.

Definition of word “to will something” is just that. It doesn’t actually pre-suppose action is possible. Free-Will is Free-Will, not omnipotence.

Games and stories do not create REAL suffering. And one must take the ways and means into consideration. Not just the outcome. Example below.

They can make psychological suffering and that is real. They can create real frustration and that creates suffering. Why would that not be real?

Example: suppose that someone was bitten by a poisonous snake. You have no antidote, so to preserve the life of the victim, you must amputate the appropriate body part. The amputation involves serious suffering, but it is more than compensated by saving the life. If, however, you have the antidote at hand and still choose the amputation, the pain cause would be gratuitous - in other words “evil”.

We are in agreement about this situation then.

And can you prove that God exists, and is benevolent if every piece of evidence is against it?

What I am currently stating is that omnibenevolence of God is quite possible in current world. Presence of suffering or evil do not make that impossible.

Using your example, God could give everyone the perfect balance, so that no one would fall of that bike.

As much as you could do homeworks of your children for their entire life to prevent them from having to work and learn. Of course, that’s not desirable for a parent… much less so for God. We are meant to learn and to learn freely and make our choices. We aren’t meant to be completely perfect from the start- because we could very well choose not to be perfect.

An omnipotent being can do everything except logically contradictory actions. And changing the soft tissue of the gums to allow the teeth to come up is not a logically contradictory state of affairs.

And this we answer with Original Sin. Effect of Adam’s Sin which we can not deny to him is that sickness, death, illness and everything of sort was brought to the world by his disobedience. God could and is in process of removing it, but removing it altogether would invalidate actions of Adam and hence rob him of his free will and it’s effects. Same as if God kept erasing every bad choice we make … that would not be freedom at all. There would be no meaning at all because in the end our choices would not matter.

 

[OrbisNonSufficit]

if you could prove it, you would need to prove that without the earthly suffering, the afterlife “bliss” (or whatever) would be logically impossible.

Not at all. Argument was that

God cannot exist as an omnibenevolent being would not allow the suffering that occurs in the world.

And that is what I am disproving. Note the “cannot” part. If I pose even one single theory (real or unreal) that can not be disproved about how God can exist as omnibenevolent being while allowing suffering that occurs in the world, that point above falls. I am not arguing about “is” but “can”, in this situation. Of course I do believe God is indeed omnibenevolent and does exist with suffering in the world, but that is not the point of this discussion.

In other words I am not convincing someone to believe in my view, I am merely saying that my view holds no contradictions whatsoever.

And preferable to the potential victims of the undesirable actions - and undesirable for the potential and actual victims.

I forgot about this point so I’ll edit it in…

Well now we are in root of the problem. You take world from eyes of certain group of people. Reverse this. What if we need to make it preferable scenario for those who committed those atrocities? Why not them? What is indicator of whose view we need to follow as to make their situation desirable. Now answer is very subjective in your view, but in my view it is quite objective. God’s view matters, because in the end if God does create reality and is omnipotent and omnibenevolent being, what He does and says is Law, is Reality, and is Good. So what fallible creations think can not supersede what infallible Creator set as Truth. In other words in world where God is omnibenevolent suffering may exist because He sets standard of what is indeed “benevolent” and what is not.

 

[Episcopalian]

I’m leaving Catholicism, and Christianity more broadly, because I cannot reconcile the God of Classical Theism, who is absolutely simple, with a Trinity.

This isn’t an airport, no need to announce your departure

 

[OrbisNonSufficit]

This isn’t an airport, no need to announce your departure

In this particular case, OP is under impression he found contradiction in doctrines of Christianity. This means two things

1. He is making sure there is not something he is missing by allowing us to debate it with him and convince him if he indeed is making a mistake, showing he is open-minded about his position.
2. He is making sure that if indeed he is correct, other people can see it and perhaps make their judgment based on what they perceive is true. Hence if Trinity indeed is irreconcilable with Divine Simplicity, Christianity itself falls and there is no point in being Christian at all (meaning people who are open minded about being Christians can change their minds for a better view). This shows that OP does care about what is Truth and wants the best for others.

As OP has shown, his point was largely the 1st one but in the end this does work for both. I think it is amazing that OP has asked and started this thread, as well as fact he is searching for the Truth and not just apathetically staying in one for no reason (or again, just believing in his guts and leaving Faith without debating about it with others who are experienced).

In the end I think that arguments in this thread were sufficient for me to keep me Christian but if that is not sufficient for the OP, that’s his free choice. He must be convinced there is no contradiction to believe in something otherwise it isn’t belief worth having.

 

[Julie4]

Hi DefaultMan. I have a simple way to explain the Trinity. You may think that it’s ridiculous, but I’ll give it to you anyway. The Trinity is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Three Persons – One God. Like an egg. Shell, Egg White, Yolk. My brilliant analogy. Lol!

There are things that I do not understand about God – say, evil people with picture-perfect health versus Good people with debilitating illness. It’s hard to wrap my head around.

God the Father loves us. God the Son pleads our case before God the Father. God the Holy Spirit is God manifesting Himself in the world. Same God – three Persons with separate functions.

You don’t have to logically understand the Trinity. But you do need to accept it by faith. God is simple – yolk, egg white, shell. And He is a mystery – Omniscient, Omnipotent, etc…

In the Book of 2nd Corinthians, it tells us that “We will know, as we are fully known,” and “we are looking as through a glass dimly.” We will not understand everything about God in this life – but all will be clarified when we are with God. The Bible also says that God will “spend eons and eons showing us His love.”

Sometimes faith is simply the conscious act of accepting what we do not totally understand.

One more thing: In the Bible it says that “Jesus is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.” The God of Classical Theism was the exact God we have now.

I pray that I have struck a chord with your doubts. Your honestly about how you feel is wonderful!

I hope you don’t leave.

Julie

 

[Pattylt]

But I have to point out that you still could not explain the suffering of teething. Of course I am not surprised

I’d like to understand how God could allow the suffering of His beasts. A fire is started by lightening and severely burns mother deer and her fawn. They are separated and mother dies rather quickly but in much pain. The fawn continues to live several more days, in horrible pain, starving to death and without her mother. No one witnesses this. Scenarios like this happen all the time. No one benefits from it. It’s just a senseless miserable painful suffering. Why not at the least, have them die very quickly? I just can not rationalize this in any way with a good God.

 

[OrbisNonSufficit]

But I have to point out that you still could not explain the suffering of teething. Of course I am not surprised…

I did but you were not interested. What I am saying that free will brought evil into the world and teething being painful, birth being painful, temptations we feel and sicknesses we get are all effect of that. We don’t know complete list of reasons for every single thing, but we have some idea at least. If suffering is properly accepted it makes us grow and transforms us. Teething is first real experience of suffering for an infant. Perhaps it is necessary or even good that they get to experience it.

If we cannot agree on that, there is no reason to continue.

We can. That still does not say free will is impeded because we can’t reasonably do anything. We have free will also because there are effects of our actions. Side effects as well. That means we choose not only outcome but also the road to it, and we impact indirectly or directly more than we want.

I also still fail to see how does existence of suffering disprove benevolence of God. It only works if we assume suffering is bad but then suffering gives us warning. Suffering we experience is just tiny fraction of real suffering and as such it is preferable for us to be alarmed by as little as what we can experience on this world to make us grow and understand … in order to escape real suffering of the soul. God can not solve all problems for us if he is omnibenevolent because that would not be good and wouldn’t teach us anything (and teaching us automatically robs us of free will and/or gives us extreme responsibility where even one little sin results in just pain).

 

[OrbisNonSufficit]

The first thing where me must agree that " gratuitous, unnecessary pain and suffering is “evil” - in the sense that it cannot be reconciled with a loving and caring or benevolent deity.

I can not necessarily agree with that, as it is unclear what you mean by it. Of course, God can not directly cause such suffering but permitting it can be reconciled with God in the event that permission itself is necessary (not the suffering itself).

 

[OrbisNonSufficit]

I would love to hear it. Please do so.

I already have. God’s omnibenevolence relates to Him, not to our perception. God needs to preserve free will more so than absence of suffering which is in itself neutral and only choice to make suffering bad is in our perception (default stance is to perceive it as wrong because of effects of original sin, but that can be changed by free will). God can not remove obstacles for us (as much as parents shouldn’t do their kid’s homeworks) just for sake of it neither can he engrave knowledge and Truth into us because that denies our free will and basically takes away our responsibility. God as omnibenevolent being can not cause meaningless suffering but can permit it to exist to maintain free will and our own sovereignty. Suffering itself is not comparable to real suffering souls can experience (as much as kid would cry about a simple slap but someone who has experience being burned alive wouldn’t really have same reaction towards same slap) and as such is not inherently a thing we should concern ourselves with. Our perception makes us think we are all important and things and hardships we experience are all grave… but in the end that is not how the world works because what matters would be life beyond the grave and soul over the body. That’s a scenario which easily disproves what you have stated.

 

[OrbisNonSufficit]

I am glad we can at least attempt to find a common starting point. You understood exactly what I mean. Suppose you find a psychopath torturing a kid, or a pet. You are in the position to interfere, but you don’t.

This works because I am on same level as psychopath torturing a kid. My experience and perception of pain is same (or similar enough) and therefore if I exercise my free will I do not indeed oppose free will of said psychopath nor the free will of the kid; I am merely reacting to effects of psychopath’s actions. However, this does not work with God and humans. If there is an ant colony you observe and are working as sort of their “god” for lack of a better word, you can not go and interfere to solve their internal disputes if you want them to learn that themselves. You can technically give them opportunities to solve them or set them an example, but you can not micromanage everything for them. Of course that is if you really want the best for them and you wan’t them to one day be like you (which God does want with humans).

Now for God, who is infinitely greater than us, who understands that years are nothing more than seconds and who understands that pain of burning alive and pain of being slapped are comparable to each other while being incomparable to real pain of the souls, intervention of using his omnipotence would practically rob us of free will. God’s intervention in that aspect would make us obey out of fear and not out of free will, which effectively thwarts God’s goal for us to “evolve”.

So how then do you explain the billions of years of suffering by living things and extinctions prior to the appearance of humans? (Typical answers to this are either being a Creationist or believing animals feel no pain).

They are necessary indicators. Animals are indeed capable of feeling pain, but they do not possess souls. That does not make it correct for us to torture them (and big part of that is because it hurts our souls if we do that) but it can not be compared with torturing people. For the sake of the argument, let’s assume there was no pain at all (just necessary indicators in some other form) for animals prior to existence of humans.

Then why do you help people at all? The above is one of the most anti-Jesus messages I have ever heard.

Because we are on the same level. God helps us too, but in ways that do not invalidate our own choices, free will and responsibility. In other words humans are a team, and God is cheering for us and helping us as he can without ever making the game unfair for us. Helping people eases their suffering, but primarily works as setting an example and as improving the world in bigger picture, as well as helping out our own souls by acts of love and compassion. We help each other without taking away responsibility away from humanity, and without taking away free will of humans as a whole race.

 

[OrbisNonSufficit]

You seem to worship a different God than the Christian God. The foundation of prayer is to ask God to remove obstacles. And, as mentioned above, according to the Bible, God has removed obstacles for his chosen people throughout history.

Yes, and prayer is part of how and why God does it. It isn’t entirely without our actions- prayer is an action too of course.

foremost of which is that he does no such thing - according to the Bible God constantly violates our free will - even for things as meaningless as not enough wine at a party

Your assumption that it is meaningless thing is based on your limited human perception. God judged it not to be which indeed means that if God is infallible, you are wrong. Another thing is that God removed those obstacles for reasons different than “because they would suffer”… or at least that reason plus other reasons. God did that to teach humanity and to help us grow. He did not violate free will.

you can redefine “goodness”, but that’s nothing but an escape. It’s also a horrific position.

I think that relying on our definitions is horrific position, especially in a world where God exists. That would mean following:

1. God defined goodness first, so “redefinition” is practically what humans did, not God.
2. If we accept that we ought to only follow our own definitions, you can pretty much argue for anything in your own definitions and language twists and make Truth itself subjective. This leads to fact that I could technically misinterpret anything just to get what I want, even something immoral.

 

[OrbisNonSufficit]

But here you are in the position of “foreseeing” the actions of this psychopath, and you can choose to let him go ahead, or prevent him to do so. And you (Or God) let him go on.

Yes, because if God impedes every single action we make just because it is not completely correct, then what becomes of free will?

Of course it does. The phrase of “Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi” is still rejected, you did not present any argument why should God be exonerated for non-interference.

Rejected on what basis? Anyhow, because humans are not omnipotent and therefore they exercise free will differently than God exercises His Absolute Will. God does not have “free will” in sense we do- God can not choose evil nor can he act out of lack of knowledge… therefore God has different limits on how he is supposed to act and he can’t impede our free choices because then there is no point in creating humanity (and since he created it, there must be reason).

Of course your argument that God wants us to learn, and gradually be like him is an unsupported hypothesis .

Hypothesis is enough in this scenario. I am to propose a scenario in which God is omnibenevolent and exists in world with suffering. Heck I wouldn’t even need to use our world and could just use imaginary world in which every being suffers once per year by having urge to scratch something they can’t reach for 5 seconds and make my point there, and it would be valid in our context.

simply use a different scenario, where they can learn without the suffering

If suffering does not exist, learning is impeded. My cousin once learned that closing door while having his hands inside them was not a good idea and from that point on he was actually so careful about everyone else closing door like that it was unbelievable. That is also a method of learning.

And there is no reason to allow a slow and painful learning process, when the same result can be achieved by simply “willing it into existence”.

If you will it into existence, people can not choose to not learn and not follow path of God. That means you are denying them free will.

Of course one of the best solutions would be to create everyone with a good disposition , when they simply do not WANT to hurt anyone else.

Which denies free will of Satan who tempts people and robs us of opportunity to resist temptation and be like God. Not absolute good because again we are not meant to evolve in this scenario.

 

[OrbisNonSufficit]

But there are examples of God interacting with the world without the request or prayers of people. In fact, most of the Bible is God intervening in human affairs unilaterally.

Could you please provide those examples?

Your entire response boils down to “God works in mysterious ways”, which means you concede the argument.

Oh no not at all. I am not saying God can not be understood (even though I believe it, I am not using that at the moment), I am saying that trying to fit God into human notions is wrong. You can understand this aspect of God (in limited fashion but that’s enough for sake of this conversation), but you can’t try to place Him into human definitions. You need to change your definitions to try and reach God and even then you can’t contain Him.

I’m not sure you understand what I mean by divine command theory. A common response to these problems is that whatever God allows is “goodness”. For example, God has all the first born children in Egypt killed. I think that is horrific. But by divine command theory, it’s a “good” thing for no other reason than God ordered or performed the action.

I see. My response to this is that it is not horrific because death is not horrific. Why would it be, in a world where you continue to a better place as result of death?

Divine command theory does hold some aspects I agree with, and that is that God defines things and not humans. If God is not benevolent by our standards then He doesn’t need to care, we do… but at the same time I believe everything God does is indeed morally correct. Again, in a world where God exists and suffering is permitted and God is all-good it means permission of suffering is logically good. That is easy example of contradiction to your statement that such world can not exist. If you meant to say that “there can’t exist a world where omnibenevolent (per my definition) omnipotent being exists and suffering exists” then you are correct.

But then again I can say that there can not exist a world where McDonald and KFC both exist and fruit does not exist. I just have to redefine exist to mean “are fruit” and I am correct.

 

[OrbisNonSufficit]

But according to Catholic theology all those children went to Hell because they were Egyptian and not Israeli.

???

According to what Catholic theology? Could you source that? Pretty bold statement considering Church believes we can’t know who went to Hell and who did not.

This again is no different than “God works in mysterious ways”.

It is. I am trying to make you understand that you need to use different definitions for God. You can surely understand those different definitions but they can’t be used in same way for humans as for Gods.

Ranging from destroying the world with the flood to the conversion of Paul.

Okay. Flood was death and as you have not yet proved that it is wrong in a world where God exists and afterlife exists, that does not concern me. Conversion of Paul was that Lord appeared to him. That’s all okay but Lord appeared to many other people who did not convert and therefore that is not removal of free will from Paul.

And are you really of the opinion that the death of children, say by hunger, disease, or other disasters is not horrific because they “go to heaven”?

Are you really of opinion that parents slapping their children when they misbehave would be horrific because “they get to learn” and pain isn’t even that big? I have already said that pains of this world aren’t even that significant anyway, we just don’t know what real pains are.

The above is one of the great evils of religion - specifically that we should make no attempt to help others because when we die to we will be in a better place anyway.

And that is not what Catholic Church teaches, as you probably know. Anyhow in this scenario I am not arguing for Catholic Church or for helping others, I am merely inventing a world in which your rules would be broken. That’s all. Don’t attack Church because Her teaching does not hold in hypothetical world lol.

 

[OrbisNonSufficit]

You already stated, that it is sufficient to be able to “will” something, even if the external circumstances prevent him to carry it out.

I thought we reverted to your understanding. Anyway I retract that statement as your actually describes free will better.

Just like preventing that psychopath from burning that child for gratuitous pleasure of seeing it squirm. The worst “defense” is “but what about the evil ones?”

God is not equal to Satan, and does not impede effects of His free will.

If you wish to present a real defense, you need to show that unnecessary, gratuitous pain and suffering is somehow desirable on its own right . I doubt this can be done.

No, because I am not defending that. I am showing that world where God is omnibenevolent and suffering exists can exist even if hypothetically.

 

[OrbisNonSufficit]

So, let me understand. Both the will and the ability to act on that will are equally important. And we in agreement on that?

Yes.

I don’t see your argument to support it. And you need to be more precise: “not suffering, but gratuitous and unnecessary suffering” is the problem. What suffering cannot be overcome even by an omnipotent being?

Overcoming suffering is something even humans do, but that does not mean we don’t experience it. Overcoming something comes if we experience it and learn from it.

 

[Toolmaker]

Dear default man,

So you would leave Christianity because you cannot reconcile the Trinity with Theism. Consider this, why does the Trinitarian view need to reconcile its self with the Theism? Perhaps Theism is in error?

Have you given Christianity a fair chance in your life and in your heart? I professed to be a Christian for a long time before I actually realized what it meant to have the Holy Spirit working in my heart to motivate me, to guide me and to bring me closer to the Father and the Son. When that happens, there can be no turning back. I know now what it feels like to rest my head on God’s shoulder and have every care lifted from my own spirit.
It’s a journey each of us must take up but you won’t be on the journey by your self.
I realize I cannot impose my experience upon you but I would ask you to make a final call to God to make them self known to you.

 

[EndTimes]

I ask again if you would please provide some attributes that God possesses so we can continue the discussion.

I’ve given them…