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ignatius777
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Thats absurd
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4Horsemen
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Atheists and agnostics (one who is not sure of belief but lives as if he doesn’t believe) have the same problem with doubts about the existence and goodness of God. They are tossed by the storms of their own fears. If God is out there somewhere and really loves me, why has such and such happened to me? My family and friends? They rage at God and say He has betrayed them and so He really doesn’t exist. They obsess over God and denounce Him as no more important than the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, Loch Ness Monster and whatever tickles their fancy. The demands of the real Truth are too much for them. Basically, what is wrong is that they don’t want to give up their unbelief even though it is the rational choice. They’d rather persist in their sins.
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Spock
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As soon as someone will give a reasonable answer, I will be happy to stop. In the meantime, you are free to neglect these threads. Sounds fair?
I already know what the christian position is. I also know the excuses it presents as “arguments”. I simply find them insufficient. By the way, this thread is not about the problem of evil. It is about responsibility.
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authenticity
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Who holds God responsible? If someone is judging God, then that God is not the true God. It doesn’t really matter what you or I think about God’s justice because we obviously are lacking in full knowledge of any given situation.
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Spock
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Right. Just like we lack “full information” in every case. That does not prevent us making a judgment based upon the available information.
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Spock
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Don’t project your own fears onto us. You forget that we don’t say that the importance of the “tooth fairy, etc…” is on par with the importance of God. Not at all. We only say that the evidence is exactly the same - there is none.
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You
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Evidence, I thought, was tied to claim. Your tooth disappeared and was replaced by money until you discovered new evidence.
Evidence for the Creator of everything is everything created.
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ronnie_bonigli
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Wow Spock, you are now starting to sound like one of those condescending supercilious atheists I used to see all the time on the Amazon.com religion forum. To say the evidence for God is the SAME as to evidence for the toothfairy is both juvenile and intellectually ignorant. Besides the dozens of philosophical arguments for God on which all good men may disagree (btw there are no profound "arguments for the existence of the toothfairy), there are also thousands upon thousands of supernatural events and miracles that continue to be recorded to this day. Pick up a book on the life of Padre Pio for just one example. Sure, it’s possible all these thousands of supernatural events are lies and delusions, but I sure don’t know of any claims of contact with the toothfairy that anyone has taken seriously. And there are the hundreds of mystics who given accounts of their contact with God, pick up a book by Saint John of the Cross or Teresa of Avila and learn a little. Again, I’ve never heard of any mystics describing their contact with the toothfairy. When an atheist says there’s absolutely no evidence for God, what he really means is there’s no evidence that HE will accept for God. Don’t project your own biases onto the rest of the world, many others do see plenty of evidence.
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You
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Circular reasoning does not prove it false. Everything is here. Its here because its here. And what is here is evidence that its here. If you could prove that here does not exist however then you would have proven the non-existance of this particular toothfaery.
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Spock
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Sure. There is plenty of evidence for the Loch Ness monster. For the Yeti in Tibet. There are even pictures of them. Yet, most people find that evidence insufficient.
If the evidence requires the a-priori acceptance of the claim, it is not much of an evidence. A real evidence is supposed to convince the skeptics. I reviewed those dozens of philosophical arguments. All of them are faulty. Many theologians concur. None of those alleged “supernatural events” has been documented properly. They are all hearsay evidence. The “mystics” testimony is not even binding on the Catholics. Catholics are free to disregard them, if they so choose. And now you think that they should be taken seriously by skeptics?
And I am getting tired of seeing the same nonsense, like: “They are tossed by the storms of their own fears.” Also: “The demands of the real Truth are too much for them.” Furthermore: "…they don’t want to give up their unbelief… " And also: “They’d rather persist in their sins.”
If that is not supercilious and condescending, then I don’t know what is. Obviously the medicine is not so palatable when it comes from someone else.
You say: “When an atheist says there’s absolutely no evidence for God, what he really means is there’s no evidence that HE will accept for God.” Not just ME, personally, all the non-Christians find the evidence lacking. Maybe we are all too dumb to recognize the evidence as such. Maybe we all lie to ourselves. Maybe we know that the evidence is solid, we just don’t want to admit it. Because we want to wallow in our sinful lifestyle. Or because of our “pride”. Or whatever else… I suggest to think about this simple fact: if there would be real, ironclad proof aka. solid, incontrovertible evidence, there would only be Christians.
You know, what buddy? As soon as this nonsense will stop, I will be happy to stop responding to them.
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You
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I happen to disagree. To begin to reason you must first establish whether there is something to reason about. Clearly we have agreed that the evidence for here is here and the evidence for the toothfaery is nowhere. And you then proceed to reason from there about the here…
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ronnie_bonigli
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Please spare us the bogus self-pity about getting “tired of nonsense”, you enjoy your roll here as forum gadfly very much, if you didn’t you wouldn’t be starting new threads at a pace higher than anyone else here.
And how do you get to decide the definition of evidence? to claim that all evidence must convince any skeptic out there is ridiculous. And many of those “alleged supernatural events” have been documented properly. Just not by the people you want, sorry but we can’t have a team of MIT physicists and other scientists instantly show up while a miracle is occuring, that’s just the way it is. We need to go on eyewitnesses. If you were on trial for murdering your next door neighbor and the little old lady who lived across the street claimed she saw you leaving your neighbors house at midnight on the night of the murder, she would be used as eyewitness evidence at the trial. Maybe she would be wrong, maybe someone would think she’s getting senile and only thought she saw you but she’d still be a powerful bit of evidence in your trial. There are thousands of credible eyewitnesses in just the last century alone to various miracles and supernatural events attributed to God, you can brush them all aside if you like but spare us the juvenile comparisions to evidence for the tooth-fairy.
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Tantum_ergo
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Well, I am interested in the idea of responsibility.
OK, so if there is a God and He created somebody with the capacity to choose good OR evil, and the person created chose evil. . .well, of course the person with the ultimate responsibility is the person who chose. But then again, that person just didn’t come into existance from random molecules, right? He was actually created by a Creator.
OK then, so the Creator would then, one feels, have some kind of responsibility for ‘letting’ that creation do an evil deed (because of course if he is a benevolent and good creator, you’d think he would ‘stop’ the evil.)
UNLESS there is something more to creation than good versus evil. UNLESS there is something outside our own knowledge. . .not necessarily because we can’t know it but perhaps something that exists yet we have not discovered. IOW, the ‘evidence’ is out there, just as the farthest constellations are in galaxies far beyond ours which we have not yet seen. . .
Picture a man lying screaming on a table. Another man rushes over to him and cuts his leg deeply, causing even greater pain and agony (an evil, yes?)
Picture the same man in a ‘different’ universe where, when the ‘cutter’ is about to use the knife, the man pleads and begs him not to. . .and the cutter does not cut him. This seems good, yes?
BUT. . .the man screaming had a bad infection. The first ‘universe’ man, by cutting the leg, caused a release of the pus and infection, and a few days later, the man’s pains were gone and he was well. The action that ‘seemed’ evil was in fact life-saving.
In the SECOND universe, the man’s infection spread throughout his body and HE DIED. The action of not cutting, which ‘seemed’ good, led in fact to death.
Do we really know what the ultimate purpose of the universe is, let alone fully understand our parts? Can good come from evil? Can evil come from good? Is there something ‘more’ outside our earthly understanding?
God may be ‘responsible’ but that responsibility may in fact ultimately be–and one day be proven to you and all of us–that He was always working for, and in fact achieved, nothing but good. I trust Him. Logically speaking, if one accepts a God and that the God is good, one should accept that His ultimate purpose will in fact work out for good, even if there are what to our flawed (and temporal) understanding appear to be evils along the way.
OK, so if there is a God and He created somebody with the capacity to choose good OR evil, and the person created chose evil. . .well, of course the person with the ultimate responsibility is the person who chose. But then again, that person just didn’t come into existance from random molecules, right? He was actually created by a Creator.
OK then, so the Creator would then, one feels, have some kind of responsibility for ‘letting’ that creation do an evil deed (because of course if he is a benevolent and good creator, you’d think he would ‘stop’ the evil.)
UNLESS there is something more to creation than good versus evil. UNLESS there is something outside our own knowledge. . .not necessarily because we can’t know it but perhaps something that exists yet we have not discovered. IOW, the ‘evidence’ is out there, just as the farthest constellations are in galaxies far beyond ours which we have not yet seen. . .
Picture a man lying screaming on a table. Another man rushes over to him and cuts his leg deeply, causing even greater pain and agony (an evil, yes?)
Picture the same man in a ‘different’ universe where, when the ‘cutter’ is about to use the knife, the man pleads and begs him not to. . .and the cutter does not cut him. This seems good, yes?
BUT. . .the man screaming had a bad infection. The first ‘universe’ man, by cutting the leg, caused a release of the pus and infection, and a few days later, the man’s pains were gone and he was well. The action that ‘seemed’ evil was in fact life-saving.
In the SECOND universe, the man’s infection spread throughout his body and HE DIED. The action of not cutting, which ‘seemed’ good, led in fact to death.
Do we really know what the ultimate purpose of the universe is, let alone fully understand our parts? Can good come from evil? Can evil come from good? Is there something ‘more’ outside our earthly understanding?
God may be ‘responsible’ but that responsibility may in fact ultimately be–and one day be proven to you and all of us–that He was always working for, and in fact achieved, nothing but good. I trust Him. Logically speaking, if one accepts a God and that the God is good, one should accept that His ultimate purpose will in fact work out for good, even if there are what to our flawed (and temporal) understanding appear to be evils along the way.
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authenticity
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In this case, we don’t have information regarding the after-life, which in Christian theology is the point of this life. You are looking at this life as an end. Why would God create people who aren’t saints? Why not just create a universe where everyone loves God from the start, no questions asked?
But to a Christian, this life is the means… in other words, God created people as they are for the opportunity of becoming saints-- the worse of a sinner, the greater the opportunity of becoming a saint. His fore-knowing that not all people will become saints may seem dastardly from our relative point of view, however the universe serves to glorify him either way. Do you care what my judgment is of you, with my partial information and all? Probably not. Do you think God cares what your judgment is of him? It’s like being upset that gravity exists. Your relative opinion doesn’t matter. Sinners glorify him with their exceptionally bad example relative to the rest of us, as do saints glorify him by their wonderful example. You have a choice what you want to be, either way you are serving God. The only difference is your personal destiny.
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PAboy57
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Hi Spock,
I am clearly not a philosophy guy but will discuss beliefs I hold and why. Always feel free to point out if I’m saying something that makes no sense.
- God is responsible for creating us and I can never deny that. He created us good with the ability to reason right from wrong. That is the free will part.
- knowing something will happen, A & E will sin, does not mean he is responsible. He created them with goodness and they chose evil. Did He know, sure. ** But because He knew would you rather there be no creation???** It is similar to a parent / child relationship. We know what will happen but allow it to happen so the child learns. Nothing prevented Adam asking God for help
. He preferred to trust Eve and eat the forbidden item. He knew God’s command also but willfully chose to not obey . - I don’t understand what crime you a placing on God
??? He didn’t sin. You are verifiying that He knows all things in my opinion. I agree with you. I disagree that God was responsible for the sin. - God wiped out creation because it went bad except for Noah, family and some animals. God gave us another chance knowing we would sin and someone, His Son, would end up making restitution. Yet another opportunity for all to believe.
- There is so much documentation on wonders by God and His saints with no earthly explanation. We have enough to not be swayed. All of the wonderful math and physics laws just didn’t happen by chance. God when becoming human chose to live by them. If you refuse to believe we cannot make you, but we try as we want only good for you for eternity
. Remember you cannot prove He doesn’t exist 
. - We also acknowledge that we cannot show God to you. That is the Faith part. It is the first virtue along with Hope and Charity that makes up the foundation of our belief system. We are OK with that and spend countless hours praying and receiving the 7 sacraments of the Catholic Church. I trust the Church is good, however, some bad people
within aren’t so good. We weed them out eventually 
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Spock
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I would say that the person has the immediate responsibility, but the creator has he ultimate responsibility. This difference is very important.
Sure, that is a possibility. But the point is that we are unaware of it, so we must go by the available evidence.
Undoubtedly true, in this specific example. Now, how can you generalize from the specific unto the whole “schmeer”? That is the step which is missing. Sure, you can say that this is what your faith tells you. But since your faith is yours, and not mine, if you wish to make a sound argument, you should substantiate that in every case the seemingly “evil” procedure is actually “benevolent”. To bring up a valid example is fine. But not enough.
Right on. “Logically speaking” it is true. But a logical syllogism is not necessarily a sound one. If one has some information availabe, then one must make a judgment call based upon that information.
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Spock
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That is precisely the point.
Ok, let’s categorize the people into 3 groups: 1) the ones who are the “saints”, 2) the people who are sinners and eventually will become “saints”, 3 the people who will not become “saints”. What is the point of creating people in the third group?
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Spock
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The ability to know right from wrong is not “innate” according to Genesis. It was acquired when the forbidden fruit was tasted. Since God ordered that tree to be left alone, he preferred us not to know right from wrong.
Yes. That is the point. It is better not to create something than it is to create something that the creator “knows will go bad”. And, besides, he could have created a world, which will not “go bad”. All he had to do is not place that tree into the garden, or protect it from access.
No “crime”, of course. Negilgence, definitely. He did not directly cause the “fall”, he made it possible. And that is negligence.
- I don’t understand what crime you a placing on God
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