The atheists best argument?

[CHRISTINE77]

Atheists are idiots. They just want to have validation for their sins on earth. They have nothing to offer except Satan’s ways.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Your position sounds reasonable if you can be assured that you’re not one of the ones getting flooded or diseased, or otherwise tortured.
As I just said:

“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.”

From the atheist point of view death as a result of murder or natural disaster, is profoundly and irremediably tragic.

From the Christian point of view death is only irremediably tragic if we fail to meet God on the other side. This is why it pays to remain constantly in a state of virtue so that the devil, despite his conniving, comes up empty.

 

[tonyrey]

LOL, atheistic physcialism is NOT the only reasonable alternative to the various Christianities. False dichotomy.

What are the reasonable alternatives?

 

[Tomdstone]

. You envision God as an abuser of omnipotence who forcibly removes free will from human beings, so that they cannot choose against him and so suffer.
God does not control a person’s free will. That would be abuse.

Are you free to choose against God in heaven?

 

[goout]

Are you free to choose against God in heaven?

We have radically and completely free will when we are united to God’s will (that’s what it means to be “in” heaven. Heaven is more a state of being than a physical place).

Choosing against God is not an exercise of true freedom but an abuse of it.

Yes, free will exists in supernatural abundance “in” heaven.

 

[Tomdstone]

We have radically and completely free will when we are united to God’s will (that’s what it means to be “in” heaven. Heaven is more a state of being than a physical place).

Choosing against God is not an exercise of true freedom but an abuse of it.

Yes, free will exists in supernatural abundance “in” heaven.

So you will be able to make bad choices in heaven?

 

[JapaneseKappa]

“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.”

From the atheist point of view death as a result of murder or natural disaster, is profoundly and irremediably tragic.

From the Christian point of view death is only irremediably tragic if we fail to meet God on the other side. This is why it pays to remain constantly in a state of virtue so that the devil, despite his conniving, comes up empty.

That is also why someone came up with Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius. Besides, not all evil results in death.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

That is also why someone came up with Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius. Besides, not all evil results in death.

Your Latin reference is very valid. Those persecuted were mainly the Cathari and the Aligensians, very evil people.

Here is the Catholic Encyclopedia mention of the heresy:

*The Cathari and the Catholic Church:

The Catharist system was a simultaneous attack on the Catholic Church and the then existing State. The Church was directly assailed in its doctrine and hierarchy. The denial of the value of oaths, and the suppression, at least in theory, of the right to punish, undermined the basis of the Christian State. But the worst danger was that the triumph of the heretical principles meant the extinction of the human race. This annihilation was the direct consequence of the Catharist doctrine, that all intercourse between the sexes ought to be avoided and that suicide or the Endura, under certain circumstances, is not only lawful but commendable. The assertion of some writers, like Charles Molinier, that Catholic and Catharist teaching respecting marriage are identical, is an erroneous interpretation of Catholic doctrine and practice. Among Catholics, the priest is forbidden to marry, but the faithful can merit eternal happiness in the married state. For the Cathari, no salvation was possible without previous renunciation of marriage. Mr. H.C. Lea, who cannot be suspected of partiality towards the Catholic Church, writes: “However much we may deprecate the means used for its (Catharism) suppression and commiserate those who suffered for conscience’ sake, we cannot but admit that the cause of orthodoxy was in this case the cause of progress and civilization. Had Catharism become dominant, or even had it been allowed to exist on equal terms, its influence could not have failed to prove disastrous.” *

 

[Bradski]

That’s absolutely not true. No good parent spends any amount of time preventing a child from exercising free will.

I have to say that you cannot be a parent. No-one locks a kid up to prevent them from coming to harm. But you don’t let them play in the pool unattended however much they want to. You don’t let them eat chocolate for dinner however much they want to. You don’t let them play with fire, however much they want to.

A child often has no concept of what is harmful, so a good parent denies the child free will where it is obvious that the child will make a choice that puts him in danger.

And good parents are all we can hope for. There’s no-one else looking after us. No-one to tell us not to go to a particular nightclub or not to go for a stroll down a pleasant boulevard or not to board a particular plane or sit on a particular beach.

 

[Bradski]

Atheists are idiots. They just want to have validation for their sins on earth. They have nothing to offer except Satan’s ways.

I’m not sure that that progressed the conversation in any meaningful way , Christine.

 

[thinkandmull]

God allows evil because he can bring the sufferers to greater joys because of the pain. That is the only explanation for it. And more, God must have known that allowing pain would result in greater joy than if He had just created angels for example. If God could have brought the same or greater good without the pain to innocent children, He would be a bad God. But the children will, in ways we don’t know, have the oppurtunity of greater happiness because of the pain so in a sense it has mercy in there. Even animals have a joy after pain that makes up for the pain they suffered. We can’t understand this because we aren’t animals, but God does not use pain of conscious greaters merely as an ends to a means, but allows it because it is the only way to bring greater joy. That alone is the explanation that satisfies reason

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Your Latin reference is very valid. Those persecuted were mainly the Cathari and the Aligensians, very evil people.

“This killing is justified because we are killing evil people” - Every genocide ever.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

God allows evil because he can bring the sufferers to greater joys because of the pain. That is the only explanation for it. And more, God must have known that allowing pain would result in greater joy than if He had just created angels for example. If God could have brought the same or greater good without the pain to innocent children, He would be a bad God. But the children will, in ways we don’t know, have the oppurtunity of greater happiness because of the pain so in a sense it has mercy in there. Even animals have a joy after pain that makes up for the pain they suffered. We can’t understand this because we aren’t animals, but God does not use pain of conscious greaters merely as an ends to a means, but allows it because it is the only way to bring greater joy. That alone is the explanation that satisfies reason

And I am sure that people who imagine themselves to be the recipient of that “greater joy” might be comforted by this. But would you comfort the weeping mothers of Egypt, who had just lost their firstborn, with this explanation?

Now, one way we might try to avoid this conclusion is by saying that the “reasons why” take some “higher view” of things, that there is a big picture that God is painting which is made better through our experience of evil. But this is to re-define omnibenevolence. God no longer wants what is best for us God wants what is best for his big picture.

 

[tonyrey]

:twocents:

The power of the mind (the rational soul) is indisputable not only in the very reality of “materialism” but in its being integral to the cleaving of the whole of creation into such phenomena as frames of reference and the observation of wholes such as atoms and animate beings. The universe in its holistic unity includes minds, which create an intersection of time and eternity, aka - here and now, the miracle of one’s existence in the moment.

But these words fall flat entering into other worlds, sapped of their meaning, sounding like so much jibberish.

One cannot expect anything else when “love”, which touches the core of existence, where all is one in God’s eternal act of creation, the ocean of compassion that holds us all, is reduced to mere emotion. The willful transformation of all that is Divine into the mundane is a choice, a very bad habit actually. If we try, through His grace, if it is His will, if it makes us more loving persons, we may find that we can lift ourselves up from our bootstraps and touch the heavens.

:clapping: The highest form of love demonstrated by Jesus is the most powerful demonstration of the absurdity of atheism.

 

[inocente]

It could only be an argument against "omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent ones” if we human beings had the capacity to understand all of reality from the perspective of the "omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent” Being.

We don’t, so the argument cannot provide the most basic conditions under which we would know with certainty that it has to be true.

Few posters have been willing to debate the opening post. You at least are on-topic here but you’re not tackling the logic of the argument known as the Problem of Evil.

The Problem of Evil was first stated by Epicurus:

1. If an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good god exists, then evil does not exist.
2. There is evil in the world.
3. Therefore, an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good god does not exist.

Thus, for instance if there are any sexually abused children then:

a. God is powerless to prevent it, or
b. God is unaware of it, or
c. God allows it and therefore God’s morality is not our morality.

In other words God is not acting as any normal person would, because even though human beings are not all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good, any of us will do whatever we can to stop children being abused as soon as we’re aware of it.

Your argument here seems to be that if we could only see the sexually abused child from God’s perspective, we too might allow the abuse to continue, but no normal human being would accept that the sexual abuse of a child could ever be morally good or morally permissible in any circumstances whatsoever.

As the OP says, many of us Christians don’t have a good answer to the Problem of Evil.

 

[Aloysium]

The weeds are allowed to grow with the wheat so that it might not be damaged.
Fact is that people who are abused can be healed, it is all washed away.
The most serious consequence has to do with the reality that sin breeds sin; what we do ourselves is the dirt that will destroy us.
But, that too is cleansed in the cross which connects us to Christ, to the Source of everlasting life, infinite beauty, eternal peace.
This thing that we are here involved in is huge; there should be nothing, but here we are.
No better solution is offered to the undeniable reality of suffering.
Without its connection to the Divine, it is pointless. Better to have not existed at all.
How could anyone wish not to have lived, with all the struggles, the successes and the failures, fulfillments and regrets, the light and the dark places?
How does one see the miracle that this is when it is everywhere?
That said, I’m just sitting at the station under construction, waiting to go Home after a very long day.

 

[Peter_Plato]

To really understand, you’ll have to explicitly define “omnibenevolent.” The definition given in the problem of evil is typically something along the lines of: “an entity is omnibenevolent if and only if it always wills what is good/best for us.”

What is the difference between omnibenevolent and merely always being benevolent?

God, by the way, is not “an entity.”

If your definition holds then any “entity” that always wills the good would be omnibenevolent.

It isn’t merely about willing what is good, it is about determining the very nature of Goodness.

I would suggest that omnibenevolence is beyond merely willing what is good or best to being the standard for what is good or best. We wouldn’t say merely that God is good, but rather that God is Goodness Itself.

There is nothing that can be omnibenevolent, besides God, precisely because there can be nothing but God who defines what goodness is. God is all-good because there is nothing good that doesn’t derive its goodness from God and there is nothing but Goodness to God.

 

[goout]

Few posters have been willing to debate the opening post. You at least are on-topic here but you’re not tackling the logic of the argument known as the Problem of Evil.

The Problem of Evil was first stated by Epicurus:

1. If an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good god exists, then evil does not exist.
2. There is evil in the world.
3. Therefore, an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good god does not exist.

Thus, for instance if there are any sexually abused children then:

a. God is powerless to prevent it, or
b. God is unaware of it, or
c. God allows it and therefore God’s morality is not our morality.

In other words God is not acting as any normal person would, because even though human beings are not all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good, any of us will do whatever we can to stop children being abused as soon as we’re aware of it.

Your argument here seems to be that if we could only see the sexually abused child from God’s perspective, we too might allow the abuse to continue, but no normal human being would accept that the sexual abuse of a child could ever be morally good or morally permissible in any circumstances whatsoever.

As the OP says, many of us Christians don’t have a good answer to the Problem of Evil.

The answer is simple yet difficult to accept.
God is love and is the source of everything.
Because God is love he desires relationship with his creatures.
A relationship of love is free by nature. Without free will there can be no relationship.
Human beings are created for communion with each other in God.
Human beings abuse free will to reject God.
Because we are created for communion with one another, the failings of one person affect all, even though those effects might not be obvious. .

God does not actively will suffering to prove how good he is.
God simply allows us to freely choose him or reject him, with the resulting consequences.
There is a difference between allowing or respecting free will, and actively willing suffering.
While he does not will suffering for anyone, because he is goodness itself suffering can be transformed for the good, for those who unite it to God.
That’s where Jesus comes in.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Few posters have been willing to debate the opening post. You at least are on-topic here but you’re not tackling the logic of the argument known as the Problem of Evil.

The Problem of Evil was first stated by Epicurus:

1. If an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good god exists, then evil does not exist.
2. There is evil in the world.
3. Therefore, an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good god does not exist.

Thus, for instance if there are any sexually abused children then:

a. God is powerless to prevent it, or
b. God is unaware of it, or
c. God allows it and therefore God’s morality is not our morality.

In other words God is not acting as any normal person would, because even though human beings are not all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good, any of us will do whatever we can to stop children being abused as soon as we’re aware of it.

Your argument here seems to be that if we could only see the sexually abused child from God’s perspective, we too might allow the abuse to continue, but no normal human being would accept that the sexual abuse of a child could ever be morally good or morally permissible in any circumstances whatsoever.

Well, no that isn’t my perspective at all.

My perspective is that God isn’t the kind of thing to merely have a “perspective” in any sense that is analogous to our “perspectives.”

If Christ (God) is the light that enlightens all men, then any perspective that we might possibly have is ultimately founded and underwritten by God. In other words, we “see” through and by God. He is the pure Ground of Being that makes “perspective” a possibility at all.

There are no independent “perspectives,” there are merely distortions on seeing properly, on seeing correctly, blindnesses of some kind or other. It is these blindnesses we euphemistically call “perspectives.”

If God’s ultimate goal is for us to see things properly “in him and through him,” then his endeavor is more like correcting our vision, not giving us a “different perspective,” but eyes to see. We are innately seeing FROM the right place, the correct perspective as it were, it is just that we are constantly trying to see things from other perspectives (blind spots) which simply blur our vision and avoids how we supposed to see in the first place: to see rightly from a genuine, uncontaminated place at the centre of Being Itself.

Evil is the existential unmooring of beings from Being Itself, from Light Itself, from Truth Itself.

The problem of evil for God isn’t a heuristic one, it is an existential one – regrounding each of us so that we see with and through “the mind of Christ.”

Morally speaking, God isn’t engrossed in the problem of child abuse, per se. That is merely symptomatic of a much larger problem. It isn’t what child abusers do that is the fundamental issue, it is what they are, what they have made themselves. God, then, must work with each individual to remake or reground them in himself. That isn’t done merely by stopping or outlawing symptomatic behaviour. The symptomatic behaviour is only that - symptomatic – it tells us that something more fundamental is wrong. But what needs to be fixed is not addressed by masking symptoms, by stopping particular actions or behaviours. The symptoms need to be revealed so that the real problem is made obvious.

God doesn’t fix people by stopping sinful behaviour, he heals by changing the fundamental ground upon which they exist, from which they see, their “perspective” – from one of being unhinged to one of being grounded in Ultimate Reality, Himself.

If we take the human approach to medicine – relief of pain or stopping the annoying symptoms of unwellness, then we might say God is a good doctor in that he wants to see and show us all of the symptoms that ail us so that we might become concerned about the real disease that afflicts us.

He isn’t about hiding the “evils” behind a facade of “good,” he wants to cure the evil at its very source, that upon which we ground our own, and necessarily false and distorted, “perspectives.”

 

[Wesrock]

It’s not an intellectual problem to believe there is some greater good that can come from permitting evil or that in the infinite (and not just in the material or finite) there can be suitable and even far excessive recompense given by an infinite, omniscient, and just God. The problem of evil is an emotional one, not intellectual.