The "Problem Of Evil" does not exist

[Oreoracle]

Intellectual superiority does not justify ill treatment of other beings. It is more reasonable to believe all life is valuable but persons on this planet and elsewhere should have precedence. There is no reason to suppose we have a greater right to life than aliens or vice-versa. This is the fatal flaw in humanism. Why should man be the measure of all things? Theism is not anthropomorphic as is often suggested. It is ratiocentric, i.e. it regards rationality as the most fundamental aspect of reality…

I apologize if I’ve asked this of you before, Tony, but what’s your definition of “person?”

 

[tonyrey]

I apologize if I’ve asked this of you before, Tony, but what’s your definition of “person?”

No need to apologize! A person is a rational, moral being with free will and the capacity for love… If aliens have sufficient intelligence to travel to this planet it is likely they come into that category. We should give them the benefit of the doubt until we have evidence they are amoral. If they start firing missiles at us it would be an indication unless we have given them reason to believe we are hostile. It doesn’t pay to have the preconceived idea, fostered by much science-fiction, that all non-humans are enemies. They may well be morally superior to us in view of our blood-stained history!

 

[grannymh]

The problem of evil may be nonexistent, but Evil exists for sure.
Just because God has created it, and for a reason.
I have already detailed it here:
vinishsky.com/what-lacked-in-paradise

Pardon me. God did not create evil per se. The footnote to Isaiah 45: 7 gives the interpretation that God permits evil for the sake of a greater good. To us, every new event (good or evil) is like a new creation of God. But to God, permitting evil or woe is a continuation of what entered the world when Adam sinned.

Furthermore, love began in Genesis 1: 27 - 31

Blessings,
granny

All human life is worthy of profound respect.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

…says the man who doesn’t know that “void” means “empty space.”

ummm…what? give me a post number.

 

[JOHNONEVI]

As a Christian, you must reconcile **moral **and **natural **evils with an omniscient and omnipotent God.

That was a facetious remark. How do you justify your claim (above) that things don’t exist unless we **know everything **there is to know about it?

It’s not just lack of evidence, again we are at a conceptual stage of argumentation, we seem to disagree on what **evidence **means.

As an agnostic I can make no claims about moral evil, so I must use the examples of natural evil, earthquakes, tsunamis, fire, etc., which many other people acknowledge as real. Not just atheists/agnostics, but Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians.

If the problem of evil (natural) did not exist as you claim, then why have so many Church fathers and doctors devoted so much of their time in apologetics towards it, i.e. theodicy?

What is the origin of evil versus what is the origin of God? There are many schools of thought that state the presence of God is within. That the inherent quality of the devine of good is perpetuity that truth and devinity are eternal forces. John Steinbeck states that evil is created and needs to be constantly recreated. That is a powerful concept.How many Holocausts have we inflicted on one another because of differences of race,religion,etc.? Humans tend to fear what is different than they are. When they encounter a different culture their first instinct is to fear and control it.They accomplish this by demonizing it. As in the Salem witch trials. Most of the victims sent to the stake were people who were alone and vulnerable and"different". The Jews throughout European history were demonized. The Third Reich was only a chapter in the Jewish Holocaust. The Moslems of the Middle East were perceived as inherently evil since before the Crusades.So what is the nature of evil? It is a political tool. a vampiric propaganda campaign used to exploit and draw on the life of those different than us. As Steinbeck states as soon as one campaign ends another one will be created. Our Savior Jesus Christ was not beyond the reach of offending the status quo.He was merely a Jewish rabbi until he challenged the Pharisses.Evil is a corruption of values but whose values whose truth? To quote Christ are mine the same as yours?

 

[Doug50]

So might makes right? We can use other species as a commodity because we can? So when the superior aliens land on earth and start harvesting homo sapiens, you’ll have no problem with that?

Sorry it’s not natural. Humans have **selectively bred **these species to be docile and plump with meat. In a word, domesticated. This is quite unnatural.

Of course might makes right…in a materialist world. That’s what most atheist don’t comprehind. They will argue there’s no such thing as Moral Truth but then go off making statements like you just did. In a materialistic world where no moral truths exist there is no such factual things as evil, good, or rights. All those things are arbitrary inventions from the human mind and have no more reality then Appollo or Thor.

To quote Infidels.org: An evolutionary account of the origin of moral judgment in human beings does not tell us what (if anything) makes a specific action moral. On a materialist view, all codes of conduct must ultimately be man-made or socially constructed; there are no objective moral laws existing independently of sentient beings in the way that laws of nature do. Thus there are no objective criteria for determining if human actions are right or wrong. The objectivity of laws of nature is clear–our approximations to them (laws of physics) are publicly falsifiable and can be corroborated by empirical evidence. Moreover, unlike natural laws, moral laws can be violated. But if what we call moral laws are really man-made inventions, our ethical rules are arbitrary and thus individuals are not obligated to follow them. Nothing makes an action objectively moral or immoral; individual and social codes vary because ethics, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. But then there are no compelling grounds for arguing that Aztec human sacrifice, Nazi or Serbian genocide, or infanticide is*** really ***wrong.

And sorry you are also wrong on your second point, too, because if Nature is all there is then it logcially follows that it is natural for humans to selecitively bread animals for their use. How could it be otherwise? There are all kinds of symbiotic relationships in nature. There are even some ants that make slaves of other ants. Are these ants violating some moral rule? Or is there something about humans that set us apart from those ants in that we are capable of seeing through a vail (however imperfectly) past materialism and into the mythical reality were moral truth resides?

 

[Oreoracle]

ummm…what? give me a post number.

You know, the post in the Thomistic Cosmological Argument thread where you said, “You’re replacing ‘void’ with ‘empty space’” and went on about how that was somehow a mistake. Buy a dictionary, dude, and don’t pretend like you don’t know what post I’m talking about.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

You know, the post in the Thomistic Cosmological Argument thread where you said, “You’re replacing ‘void’ with ‘empty space’” and went on about how that was somehow a mistake. Buy a dictionary, dude, and don’t pretend like you don’t know what post I’m talking about.

and as i pointed out then, simply replacing one term with another didnt make your argument any more valid in the face of my refutation, that “nothing” doesnt exist. its nothing more than an artifact of language. thereby killing your favorite question “why is there something rather than nothing?” as i answered because there is no such thing as nothing. if you care to pick up the argument that you abandoned here, thats fine.

so i wasnt pretending, i just dont know where you got that idea from. you were the one that thought synonyms made your argument valid.

 

[Oreoracle]

thereby killing your favorite question “why is there something rather than nothing?” as i answered because there is no such thing as nothing.

Actually, my question was, “Why do you consider a reality in which things exist to be better than a reality in which no things exist?” You say that existence is objectively better than the alternative–I say that’s bogus, and I’m calling your bluff. It’s all your opinion. You’re a living, sentient being, so it makes sense that you would fantasize about a good, loving god that was kind enough to make you live–indeed, one that is sensitive enough to care that you live–and give you a shot for eternal bliss. But the qualities you impose on this fantasy are no more objectively preferable than the qualities of my dream girl. Someone else is free to be repulsed by my dream girl without lying to themselves. They could simply prefer different things.

And yes, I fully expect you to pull off an evasion of this point like none other; one that would rival any evasions we’ve seen in the Matrix trilogy, even.

 

[Oreoracle]

if you care to pick up the argument that you abandoned here, thats fine.

Which argument did I abandon? Do you mean that the argument I abandoned was made here, or that I could pick up the argument I abandoned elsewhere here?

 

[MindOverMatter]

Which argument did I abandon? Do you mean that the argument I abandoned was made here, or that I could pick up the argument I abandoned elsewhere here?

You should be careful about picking up your old arguments. They might crumble through your figures.

 

[Oreoracle]

You should be careful about picking up your old arguments. They might crumble through your figures.

Yep, I knew it. You can’t just put me on ignore. Nope, you derive too much pleasure from taunting me to do that.

Say, did you ever respond to my last post in that abortion thread of yours? Or do you think trying to refute my argument would be comparable to picking up a fragile antique? It’s nice that you respect my arguments so!

 

[tdgesq]

Buy a dictionary, dude, and don’t pretend like you don’t know what post I’m talking about.

Hmmm… What rational basis can you present for him to comply with your request? Under your worldview there is no reason to be intellectually honest - although from reading many of warpspeedpetey’s posts I am certain he is being honest.

 

[Jason_1977]

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL DOESNT EXIST???

Has um…anyone ever met my ex-girlfriend? LOL!

 

[Oreoracle]

Under your worldview there is no reason to be intellectually honest.

Sure there is. You should be honest for utility’s sake. But if it’s more useful to lie, then you should lie. We only value honesty because being honest is generally useful (that is, it prevents the suffering that would result from spreading misinformation and having others act with that misinformation in mind), but most of us recognize that this isn’t always the case.

…What is it with you people? Has the Church programmed you into thinking that emotions are so worthless that they aren’t sufficient grounds for justification, but that dogmatically dictating that God exists, complete with his incomprehensible qualities and “mysterious ways,” is an acceptable (non-) argument? Does being a creature with feelings, who is entirely at the mercy of his/her feelings, make you feel so weak that you would deny the subjective nature of ethics? Do you hate knowing that your ethical standards aren’t written in stone somewhere, and that your vision of a perfect being doesn’t exist in any tangible form? Yes, faith is your way of escaping reality in a socially acceptable way, but it must hurt knowing that the object of your faith isn’t held so dearly or so surely by others, hmm?

So go on, keep pretending that moral subjectivists and relativists are without standards, and that they’re denying some sort of evident truth. Most people are dumb enough to let you get away with it unnoticed, anyway, so it should be an easy task.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Actually, my question was, “Why do you consider a reality in which things exist to be better than a reality in which no things exist?”

because there is no such thing as “nothing” it has no substance or form, it is only an artifact of language. it literally does not exist. there is no alternative to existence. so it is not better to exist, it is the only state of being.

you havent changed the argument from the times you used “void” and “empty space”. now its “a reality in which **no things **exist”

You say that existence is objectively better than the alternative–I say that’s bogus, and I’m calling your bluff. It’s all your opinion.

i think this is the third or fourth time ive had to explain this to you, i dont think you can qualify this as a bluff or my opinion. there simply is no alternative to existence.

You’re a living, sentient being, so it makes sense that you would fantasize about a good, loving god that was kind enough to make you live–indeed, one that is sensitive enough to care that you live–and give you a shot for eternal bliss.

why? there are large numbers of people who dont believe those things, why is that the natural state?

But the qualities you impose on this fantasy are no more objectively preferable than the qualities of my dream girl. Someone else is free to be repulsed by my dream girl without lying to themselves. They could simply prefer different things.

i suspect that you are refering to the ideas that the attributes of G-d are arbitrary. indeed they are not. you seem to think we just randomly assign them by what we think is best. as ive pointed out before, people dont want evil done to them in general, evil is a privation of good, etc. but now it occurs to me that you really dont know that the qualities of G-d are stated by G-d in the Scriptures. you may say they are made up, but you have no evidence of that, while we have a feww dozen witness statements spread across a few millenia written by folks unknown one to the other, that all describe the same general relationship of G-d and man. thats a pretty good pile of evidence for our side.

And yes, I fully expect you to pull off an evasion of this point like none other; one that would rival any evasions we’ve seen in the Matrix trilogy, even.

what have i evaded?, i explained why existence is the only possibility and ive explained why the attributes of G-d are not arbitrary. but ive done this before and you just keep repeating the same crushed arguments. just like after you lost the animal emotions argument due to a lack of evidence you wrote that signature. i think it doesnt matter to you what the truth is, but rather that you are right. cognitive dissonance.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Which argument did I abandon? Do you mean that the argument I abandoned was made here, or that I could pick up the argument I abandoned elsewhere here?

the one you referred too. unless ive missed some post.

 

[tdgesq]

Sure there is. You should be honest for utility’s sake. But if it’s more useful to lie, then you should lie. We only value honesty because being honest is generally useful (that is, it prevents the suffering that would result from spreading misinformation and having others act with that misinformation in mind), but most of us recognize that this isn’t always the case.

By your own admissions earlier in this thread all you are doing here is giving your personal opinion (prevention of suffering) – your preference as to why someone ought to be intellectually honest. Your personal opinions and feelings as to why someone should be honest is not a rational basis for your request. Here, let me show you.

My preference (hypothetically) is that personal happiness should be maximized. It makes some people happy to be intellectually dishonest with others. Therefore, those people should be intellectually dishonest with others. See, I can demand of warpspeedpetey that he be dishonest with you if that is what makes him happy. Well, if my personal opinion is a rational basis for such a request anyway. But wait, so now our diametrically opposed positions are both rational bases? That would be contradictory. It’s apparent that your personal opinion does not provide a rational basis for your request.

…What is it with you people? Has the Church programmed you into thinking that emotions are so worthless that they aren’t sufficient grounds for justification, but that dogmatically dictating that God exists, complete with his incomprehensible qualities and “mysterious ways,” is an acceptable (non-) argument? Does being a creature with feelings, who is entirely at the mercy of his/her feelings, make you feel so weak that you would deny the subjective nature of ethics? Do you hate knowing that your ethical standards aren’t written in stone somewhere, and that your vision of a perfect being doesn’t exist in any tangible form? Yes, faith is your way of escaping reality in a socially acceptable way, but it must hurt knowing that the object of your faith isn’t held so dearly or so surely by others, hmm?

One of the reasons I reject your system is that it gives no value to emotions or feelings. It is simply your own personal request that I value them, but that provides no rational basis, no justification for me actually doing so. Theism, on the other hand, does provide such a basis. That is why I very much do value what you feel as well as think. All I am doing is demonstrating that such a demand is irrational in your current ethical system.

So go on, keep pretending that moral subjectivists and relativists are without standards, and that they’re denying some sort of evident truth. Most people are dumb enough to let you get away with it unnoticed, anyway, so it should be an easy task.

I agree that moral subjectivists and relativists have standards. I disagree though that those standards are justified or have any rational basis within their own worldview. People aren’t dumb or stupid because they demand a rational justification for an ethical system.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Sure there is. You should be honest for utility’s sake. But if it’s more useful to lie, then you should lie.

how machiavellian! the ends justify the means i see.

We only value honesty because being honest is generally useful (that is, it prevents the suffering that would result from spreading misinformation and having others act with that misinformation in mind), but most of us recognize that this isn’t always the case.

why should one care about others suffering? if there is no objective morality then why should other peoples suffering matter? what the golden rule? so others dont do bad things to me? to protect the weak from the strong? why? what makes the weak worthy of protection? they die first in nature. im happy to take my chances. subjective morality simply means no morality, there is no more reason to follow some subjective morality than an objective one. if utility is the highest value than, what need have i to serve other than my own? none.

…What is it with you people? Has the Church programmed you into thinking that emotions are so worthless that they aren’t sufficient grounds for justification,

for all the bleating about subjectivetivity, how do you think emotions should carry any weight? they are after all the most subjective of the human experiences.

but that dogmatically dictating that God exists, complete with his incomprehensible qualities and “mysterious ways,” is an acceptable (non-) argument?

we have seen G-d, a bunch of people wrote about it. without that, we still can reason to G-ds existence. the "inchmprehensible qualities are quite chomprehensible, you simply dont know the whys and refuse to do the research that doesnt support the postion that you wish to be true. dont think we dont notice your inability to address any argument outside of morality.

Does being a creature with feelings, who is entirely at the mercy of his/her feelings, make you feel so weak that you would deny the subjective nature of ethics?

what subjective ethics? thats just a way to say no ethics. as above, there is no better reason to hang our hat on your idea of ethics than ours.

Do you hate knowing that your ethical standards aren’t written in stone somewhere, and that your vision of a perfect being doesn’t exist in any tangible form?

the ten commandments were written on stone, they are in the Ark of the Covenant. the perfect being is tangible, look around at existence itself.

Yes, faith is your way of escaping reality in a socially acceptable way, but it must hurt knowing that the object of your faith isn’t held so dearly or so surely by others, hmm?

how are we escaping reality? it is much more difficult to follow the precets of faith than to act as one wishes. why would it hurt. does it hurt you that there are so few atheists?

So go on, keep pretending that moral subjectivists and relativists are without standards, and that they’re denying some sort of evident truth. Most people are dumb enough to let you get away with it unnoticed, anyway, so it should be an easy task.

we arent pretending, subjectivism means no standards, as i point out above.

 

[Oreoracle]

because there is no such thing as “nothing” it has no substance or form, it is only an artifact of language. it literally does not exist. there is no alternative to existence. so it is not better to exist, it is the only state of being.

When I refer to nothingness, I’m not speaking of something that has form. Rather, I am speaking of the negation of all that exists. So when I say, “no things exist” I mean that “things don’t exist.” You’ve used negative existentials before, correct? Have you ever said that unicorns don’t exist, or that fairies don’t exist? This is the same concept, except we are negating everything, not just fairies and unicorns. Why is a universe where this is the case, where no things can ever come to exist, any worse off than the universe we have now? Or if you’ll allow me to phrase this more conveniently, why is a universe in which fairies exist any more or less valuable than a universe in which fairies don’t exist? How does the existence of things produce or yield value? Come to think of it, what is value, to you? I mean, if we’re going to talk about maximals, greatness, value, and the like, I expect definitions, not some airy fairy rhetoric from medieval theologians (coughAquinascough).

you havent changed the argument from the times you used “void” and “empty space”. now its “a reality in which **no things **exist”

Change that to “a reality in which things don’t exist.” I thought that my meaning was obvious before, but apparently not.

there simply is no alternative to existence.

Tell that to the seemingly absent unicorns.

why? there are large numbers of people who dont believe those things, why is that the natural state?

I mean that the emotional climate of humans is nearly perfect for religion. Who wouldn’t want to live with the idea of a loving, ever-present god who can make miracles occur, provide dictums for the sheep who don’t like to think for themselves, and grant us eternal life if we happen to please him? On second thought, the eternal life thing applies to everybody…make that “eternal bliss.” I know that I dearly wanted to believe in God when I was younger just so I could be with my friends and family forever. But how arrogant we humans are in thinking we’re so special that such a being, though only hypothetical, would care for us enough to construct a happy ending for those who are obedient and a bad ending for the rest! It reeks of human nature!

you may say they are made up, but you have no evidence of that, while we have a feww dozen witness statements spread across a few millenia written by folks unknown one to the other, that all describe the same general relationship of G-d and man. thats a pretty good pile of evidence for our side.

Yep, and no other religion has anything like that. No sirreee…

just like after you lost the animal emotions argument due to a lack of evidence you wrote that signature.

Firstly, the fact that you would attack what is written in one’s signature shows that you are arrogant. The fact that this dispute you’ve raised arises from questioning whether animals can feel shows that you are a fool, because you seem to be more certain in the existence of your god than you do the feelings of animals. You are in no position to debate with that sort of track record.