The atheists best argument?

[goout]

But that doesn’t contradict anything I’ve said so far.

Can you speak in specific terms?
This is just a vague assertion that is impossible to respond to.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Can you speak in specific terms?
This is just a vague assertion that is impossible to respond to.

So my kickoff assertion was:

There can be reasons why an omni/omni/omnibenevolent being would allow evil, but we can’t know what the reasons are.

I don’t believe that claim can be true. I believe that making this claim is equivalent to denying that evil exists. Specifically, if we take the definition of omnibenevolence to be “always wills what is good for us” and omnipotence to be “power and will are one” then the above claim is equivalent to saying that “there are reasons why evil is actually good for us.” In other words, there is a reason why the things we perceive to be evil are not actually evil. Evil doesn’t actually exist! It’s just an honest mistake on our part.

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.

Someone practically agreed to the “there is no evil”/“big picture” position:

He allows evil for greater joys that can only come through suffering. Sufferers thank Him eventually

I pointed out that the Christian description of hell actually says that is not the case (hell is eternal, so there is no eventual joy.)

And now you are attempting to… explain the religious perspective on why hell exists?

We have free will. We make free choices with our free will. God respects free will. Choices have consequences. Because free will is respected we suffer consequences caused by the abuse of free will.
It’s not that complicated.

So if I were to spell it out very explicitly:
Sentence 1. “We have free will.”
I did not deny that we have free will.

Sentence 2. “We make free choices with our free will.”
I did not deny that we make choices.

Sentence 3. “God respects free will.”
I did not say that God was or should be disrespectful of free will.

Sentence 4. “Choices have consequences.”
I did not say that choices were consequence free.

Sentence 5. “Because free will is respected we suffer consequences caused by the abuse of free will.”
Yes. This is the religious explanation of what hell is.

Sentence 6: “It’s not that complicated.”
Yes. But neither is it relevant.

Now: if you wanted to actually make a relevant point, you might say something like this:

It is better for an individual to be sent to hell for eternity (and thereby deprived of all hope for future joy) than for God to have chosen different consequences for our choices. Therefore, going to hell doesn’t actually constitute an “evil” that can form the basis for “the problem of evil.”

To this I would have several responses. First off, I would point out that you’re still making the “there’s no evil” argument. Second, I would simply assert that God could have created different consequences (e.g. the temporary Zoroastrian hell) which would clearly be better for us than the eternal hell of Christianity.

Note also that we have not yet discussed whether or not the souls in hell have free will (or if their free will decisions still have consequences.) If they don’t have free will, or there are no more consequences, then doesn’t hell represent an instance where

You envision God as an abuser of omnipotence who forcibly removes free will from human beings

 

[goout]

And now you are attempting to… explain the religious perspective on why hell exists?

No I rarely use religious arguments or religious language with atheists. I stick to reason and common sense. I frequently use analogies. The language of faith is foreign to just about any atheist I’ve ever talked to.

So if I were to spell it out very explicitly:
Sentence 1. “We have free will.”
I did not deny that we have free will.

It seems to me you do deny it and don’t even realize it.
You are questioning how a person can end up suffering for eternity in the face of a loving God. It’s been pointed out that people have free will and their choices have meaning and consequences. And that reality does not deny that God is love. You object.

Sentence 2. “We make free choices with our free will.”
I did not deny that we make choices.

Sentence 3. “God respects free will.”
I did not say that God was or should be disrespectful of free will.

Sentence 4. “Choices have consequences.”
I did not say that choices were consequence free.

Great then. I’m glad we agree that people choose to be deprived. Goodness is available, but people choose inferior goods and so they are in a state of deprivation of their own choosing.
To address senseless suffering that doesn’t result from direct choices…Human beings live in community and the good of one is the good of all. We are connected. Society and culture and humanity in general flourish when people are concerned with the common good of others.

Sentence 5. “Because free will is respected we suffer consequences caused by the abuse of free will.”
Yes. This is the religious explanation of what hell is.

No, it’s not explicitly religious, it’s common sense. Look around you.
The abuse of freedom has consequences.

Sentence 6: “It’s not that complicated.”
Yes. But neither is it relevant.

So you say. You saying so doesn’t make it so.

if you wanted to actually make a relevant point, you might say something like this-It is better for an individual to be sent to hell for eternity (and thereby deprived of all hope for future joy) than for God to have chosen different consequences for our choices.

There you go again, inferring that God chooses for us, and so violating free will. In-your-own-words.
I think you are confused.

To this I would have several responses. First off, I would point out that you’re still making the “there’s no evil” argument. Second, I would simply assert that God could have created different consequences (e.g. the temporary Zoroastrian hell) which would clearly be better for us than the eternal hell of Christianity.

You say “God could have created different consequences”. But you agreed we choose consequences freely. That’s contradictory.

God does not create evil. Evil is deprivation of the good.

Evil is like a beautiful campfire, only it has gone out and you are left sitting there unconsumed by the fire. In the end, there is only one thing evil, and that is to isolate one’s self from others and build a self-enclosed world that is cold, lifeless, dark, and without relationship, that serves only the self and self enclosed thoughts.

Take a look around you and observe who is full of joy and who is not. (I say take a look around you, so you can observe these things naturally, and not be forced to encounter a religious argument…)

 

[tonyrey]

Here follows the quote exactly as it appeared in your post #142. Your quote is headed “Originally posted by inocente” WHICH IS NOT TRUE, I NEVER POSTED IT.
There’s no point you continually denying it when the moderator and everyone else can look at the thread and see that I never posted it .

You know perfectly well that anyone who is following this thread is aware that you quoted my statement in your post #90:

Originally Posted by tonyrey
In a Godless universe there is no reason why anything exists.

It is hardly surprising that fifty posts later after you had failed to respond to my previous post I should repeat that statement because anyone with a modicum of intelligence knows it contradicts your statement:

A secular society is a good defense against the excesses of Talibans and co.

I omitted

Your truculence is unseemly on a philosophy forum. A little courtesy would be refreshing…

because it would have been an unnecessary distraction but in retrospect it would have made your complaint even more obviously unreasonable…

Do you really believe I was trying to misrepresent you? If so what was my motive?

It is more likely you are trying to misrepresent me…

 

[JapaneseKappa]

It seems to me you do deny it and don’t even realize it.
You are questioning how a person can end up suffering for eternity in the face of a loving God. It’s been pointed out that people have free will and their choices have meaning and consequences. And that reality does not deny that God is love. You object.

You say “God could have created different consequences”. But you agreed we choose consequences freely. That’s contradictory.

Look, lets imagine that a mugger is holding someone at gunpoint. He says “your money or your life!” The person chooses to give the mugger the money. Would the victim have less free will if the mugger changed the terms to “your money and cellphone, or your life?” Isn’t the victim freely choosing between the two options in either case?

God has set a decision before us, and like the mugger, he is the one setting the terms. He can clearly offer terms that are better for us, but you are laboring under the assumption that doing so would somehow infringe on our free will. That is clearly not the case.

No, it’s not explicitly religious, it’s common sense. Look around you.
The abuse of freedom has consequences.

Sure. But God is omnipotent and omniscient. He could shield us from the fallout when other people abuse their freedom, and he could protect us from our own abuses, e.g. by doing the opposite of the heart-hardening he did to Pharaoh in Exodus.

God does not create evil. Evil is deprivation of the good.

I’ve never heard anyone make this argument in any context other than the problem of evil, and I think the reason is clear. You’re trying to say that “evil” isn’t really the opposite of “good,” its just a way we distinguish “really good” from “only a little good.”

Its like you’re trying to argue that God didn’t really make anyone short, since shortness is just a lack of tallness. “Everybody is tall!” you would like to proclaim, “but some people are more tall than others.” In other words, I think you’re just trying to abuse semantics.

The biggest problem is that this distinction fails to actually make a difference in the problem of evil. We can easily set up a “problem of the deprivation of the good” and define “omnibenevolent” to mean “an entity that wishes for us only things whose goodness-is-not-deprived.”

 

[Aloysium]

Where worldly goods are considered reality and heaven is reduced to some state of bovine contentment, that which speaks of the Divine and the transcendent is a remote foreign tongue of confused jibberish. We have all been granted knowledge of the possibility and have the choice to move forward to the truth. Some prefer to argue against that which they know nothing about. As a poster above suggests, take a look around observe who is filled with joy. What vision offers meaning and hope, the courage motivation, and strength to confront the troubles that face a fallen humanity?

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Where worldly goods are reality and heaven is some state of bovine contentment, that which speaks of the Divine and the transcendent is a remote foreign tongue of confused jibberish. We have all been granted knowledge of the possibility and have the choice to move forward to the truth. Some prefer to argue against that which they know nothing about. As a poster above suggests, take a look around observe who is filled with joy. What vision offers meaning and hope, the courage motivation, and strength to confront the troubles that face a fallen humanity?

And which visions teach us that humanity is fallen in the first place

 

[Aloysium]

And which visions teach us that humanity is fallen in the first place

Seriously? And in which world do you exist? Look around dude. Lol.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Seriously? And in which world do you exist? Look around dude. Lol.

I guess that I am glad I don’t have your vision after all.

 

[tonyrey]

No I rarely use religious arguments or religious language with atheists. I stick to reason and common sense. I frequently use analogies. The language of faith is foreign to just about any atheist I’ve ever talked to.

It seems to me you do deny it and don’t even realize it.
You are questioning how a person can end up suffering for eternity in the face of a loving God. It’s been pointed out that people have free will and their choices have meaning and consequences. And that reality does not deny that God is love. You object.

Great then. I’m glad we agree that people choose to be deprived. Goodness is available, but people choose inferior goods and so they are in a state of deprivation of their own choosing.
To address senseless suffering that doesn’t result from direct choices…Human beings live in community and the good of one is the good of all. We are connected. Society and culture and humanity in general flourish when people are concerned with the common good of others.

No, it’s not explicitly religious, it’s common sense. Look around you.
The abuse of freedom has consequences.

So you say. You saying so doesn’t make it so.

There you go again, inferring that God chooses for us, and so violating free will. In-your-own-words.
I think you are confused.

You say “God could have created different consequences”. But you agreed we choose consequences freely. That’s contradictory.

God does not create evil. Evil is deprivation of the good.

Evil is like a beautiful campfire, only it has gone out and you are left sitting there unconsumed by the fire. In the end, there is only one thing evil, and that is to isolate one’s self from others and build a self-enclosed world that is cold, lifeless, dark, and without relationship, that serves only the self and self enclosed thoughts.

Take a look around you and observe who is full of joy and who is not. (I say take a look around you, so you can observe these things naturally, and not be forced to encounter a religious argument…)

Hell on earth is a fact for both those who live for themselves and their victims.

 

[tonyrey]

And which visions teach us that humanity is fallen in the first place

Arthur Koestler who was no fool believed there is a streak of insanity in the human race in view of its bloodstained history and insatiable lust for power…

 

[Aloysium]

I guess that I am glad I don’t have your vision after all.

I have to admit that you have a point. I will leave it at that, seeing I’m confused as to where you are coming from.

 

[Peter_Plato]

That doesn’t answer the Problem of Evil. You appear to be claiming that God is exclusively concerned with healing the pervert’s soul. None of what you say shows any concern for the child, who isn’t healed but is seriously damaged by permitting the abuse. God would be disgustingly and obscenely evil to permit the child to be used as an object so as to teach us or the pervert a lesson, or for any other reason.

I think there is something amiss here.

The answer to the question of who is in a more perilous condition, as far as Christian theology and Plato, by the way, are concerned, is that a pervert’s soul is in a far worse state than the innocent child “seriously damaged” by abuse. The pervert has lost God, has moved into a state of absolute depravity and loss (by autonomous choice,) whereas the abused child is still, all things being equal, living in union with God. Who is in a worse position in the final sense of having done – to himself – the most serious eternal damage?

Recall the parable of the shepherd who leaves behind ninety-nine of his sheep to find the lost one. So, the question for the shepherd is, "Which sheep is in the more perilous position, a pervert or an innocent child?

And no, I am not claiming God is “exclusively” concerned with the pervert, but given the great peril the pervert is in, he is more akin to the one lost sheep than the innocent child is.

This is not to say God has no concern for the child, God is omnipotent and omniscient, but the child is safe in the hands of God regardless of what he suffers. That would be just as Jesus was not abandoned by God even while suffering excruciating pain and anguish on the cross.

The child is in God and God in the child. The pervert, not so much. He is lost until found. AND he cannot find, regain or otherwise save himself, can he?

So if God is NOT “concerned with healing the pervert’s soul,” exclusively or otherwise, who is? Apparently, not you, I take it.

 

[thinkandmull]

Professor Stephen Hawking concluded in his autobiography, “One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God to determine how the universe started off”.

 

[thinkandmull]

The teleological argument is not impregnable. Maybe there was a roll of the dice between millions of galaxies and only a few are ordered. However, Aquinas’s first second third and fifth ways answer the question of WHY. What caused the big bang? Perhaps it was in a timeless state and did not have an infinity of causes, but just one cause within it. But WHY is there this timeless blog. WHY is life here, WHY is there love. God alone is the answer. Once you grant this, things makes sense and the question of pain falls into place. Your answer is that pain is just a brute fact but that is a cop out, it has no WHY to it

 

[JapaneseKappa]

I think there is something amiss here.

The answer to the question of who is in a more perilous condition, as far as Christian theology and Plato, by the way, are concerned, is that a pervert’s soul is in a far worse state than the innocent child “seriously damaged” by abuse. The pervert has lost God, has moved into a state of absolute depravity and loss (by autonomous choice,) whereas the abused child is still, all things being equal, living in union with God. Who is in a worse position in the final sense of having done – to himself – the most serious eternal damage?

Recall the parable of the shepherd who leaves behind ninety-nine of his sheep to find the lost one. So, the question for the shepherd is, "Which sheep is in the more perilous position, a pervert or an innocent child?

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

Omnibenevolent means not prioritizing one over the other.

 

[Tomdstone]

We have free will. We make free choices with our free will. God respects free will. Choices have consequences. Because free will is respected we suffer consequences caused by the abuse of free will.
It’s not that complicated.

It seems a bit more complicated to me, because humans have free will in heaven, but heaven is set up so that you will not reject God, or at least be very unlikely to sin and reject God in heaven. Why could not the earth be set up with man having free will but not inclined to sin and reject God?

 

[thinkandmull]

The parable of finding the lost sheep is just a parable about finding a lost person. It doesn’t mean God abandons others in order to do this. Its about the urgency of finding the sinner, who can only be bright to great glory by being tested

 

[inocente]

:twocents:

The healing power of God’s love is infinite.
As eternal beings called to reunite ourselves with God, who is Love, what destroys us is not what goes in, but comes out of us.
Evil breeds further evil. Through God’s grace, the cross, we can turn it all around.

I have met a number of people who have suffered individual and state-sanctioned abuse. A friend of many years was tortured decades ago for her political beliefs and, I believe, to keep in line a relative who had a certain amount of influence within the particular military controlled totalitarian state. Sometime ago the tyrant died and the funeral was broadcast with many accolades about the good he had done, along with the requisite gun-salutes and fighter jet fly-by’s. Her comment to me, was one of those that seem to pierce through to the heart of reality. When she said, “I feel like a small piece of dirt.”, I saw her, as she is, her suffering, the injustice, the rage, the hate, the anger, the fear, the utter despair. Here was the crystal clear reality of her existence, the miracle of her human being. Juxtaposed were the lies and shared illusions that constitute the fabric of societal power systems. Flesh heals, physical scars can fade, bones mend and teeth can be replaced, but it takes something else to heal the emotional and spiritual scars. Only God can transform that evil into good, wash away the grime that grows internally and is forced upon us. Like many others, she has found her salvation in Jesus Christ.

To my mind there is no problem of evil. It is, as is love. It is action that takes from what is other in order to gain something for oneself. It lies at the core of who we are in our disconnection from God. And, wherein lies the cure? Jesus Christ, who through the grace of the Holy Spirit has enabled us to give of ourselves and ultimately enter into eternal communion with the Triune Godhead.

Let’s look only at the logic of the philosophical argument. The claim is that God is all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful.

All normal persons say child abuse is evil, and will move heaven and earth to stop it. But is child abuse really evil? Should Christians intervene to stop child abuse? Well, if the claim is true, we can look to God’s actions for our answer. If the claim is true, God sees every incidence of child abuse and could easily stop it, so if God is all-good we ought to do as God does.

What action does the all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful God take? He lets children be abused. He sees all the physical, emotional and spiritual scars as they are inflicted on abused children, and takes no action, even though he could easily stop it. Case after case after case, he does nothing.

Logically then, as God is all-good, we should follow his example and also turn a blind eye to child abuse. Let all the damage be inflicted, in the faith that God will provide the ultimate cure, the ultimate love, the ultimate salvation as you say.

Yet no normal person ever follows God’s example and allows children to be abused. We do the exact opposite. So either the claim is disproved or else we’re evil when we try to stop child abuse.

So Epicurus thanks you for your :twocents: but notes that by attempting to defend the claim that God is all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful, you’ve sprung a logic trap.

 

[inocente]

I’m not sure how you could possible make that inference from my post. I’ll just restate it.
I’m addressing the problem of evil in the presence of an omnipotent and all loving God. Why does evil still exist. My post addresses the relationship between God and man. God respects free will. The abuser does not. Generally speaking, human beings abuse free will.

Please see post #384.

I think you’ve sprung a similar logic trap - if God is all-good and God respects free-will, then to be good we ought to follow God’s all-good example and also respect the free-will of the child abuser. But we don’t, every normal person does the exact opposite and violates the free-will of the abuser, because we have far more respect for the free-will of the abused child.

Therefore either the claim that God is all-good is disproved, or else we’re evil when we violate the free-will of the abuser in stopping child abuse.