this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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Growing up as an agnostic atheist, I loved the Epicurean argument. Now as an adult, I feel compelled to ask the definitions of the words Good, Evil, and God before talking about things.
I think most of the arguments surrounding these topics involves complex use of metaphors and abstract concepts that people can spend lifetimes defining, but are happy to argue about in a short form without a mutually agreed definition.
Yeah, it's that. I'm a Christian, but I have atheist close friends, and I love our debates, but it's because we respect each others enough to accept and recognise that we use the words differently. It's generally not the case on the net.
The Epicurian argument is strong only if you have a very broad definition of all-powerfulness. A definition that classical Christian theology doesn't have, as it recognizes a lot of logical limitations. All-powerfulness is the capacity to do everything possible. So yes, the Christian God is limited.
One of these logical limitations is: God can't create anything free without allowing their creation to do thing that they disapprove, thus God being good, they can't create freedom without accepting the existence of evil, which is not a thing per se, but the absence of good. God chose freedom over perfection, and it's not a human.thing, but a cosmological one.
So yeah, this is a strong argument only of you are already convinced, but it's generally the case on religious matters. I tend to tink that the only purely rational position is true agnosticism, but sometimes for important things you have to make choices without being sure. That's why I'm an agnostic theist.
...what? The absence of good is indifference. Evil takes effort, you have to work at it. It's the difference between trying to help the homeless, ignoring the homeless, and burning down tent cities.
It's a philosophical position of St. Augustine. Defining Evil as the absence of Good akin to darkness being the absence of light, or cold being the absence of heat.
This is kind of what I was talking about in my top post about diving into discussions without even agreeing on definitions.
Without a shared vocabulary, 2-way communication doesn't actually occur. It's just two people talking past each other, both missing each other's points.
I wouldn't be so quick to draw a hard line in the sand about the definition of something as abstract and nebulous as "Evil."
You might find this video interesting, it's about a comic book villain but gets into very very abstract stuff.
https://youtu.be/fcJ8QmogoXY