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!religiouscringe@midwest.social
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.
Isn't there that philosophical argument about how God can't be both all-good and all-powerful? If he's all-good, he would have to stop bad things.
It's been well over a decade since philosophy class, but this reminded me of that argument.
Forgot who made it though.
Epicurus.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
It's the Epicurean Paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurean_paradox
In summary:
If God is unable to prevent evil, then he is not all-powerful. If God is not willing to prevent evil, then he is not all-good. If God is both willing and able to prevent evil, then why does evil exist?
A: then he isn't god.
B: then he isn't good.
C: then he is evil.
D: the truth.
A: He can't.
Dude forgot to add himself as admin.
Think about the following:
In the medieval ages, people were popping out 5-15 children on average. Child mortality was extremely high, with roughly 80% of children dying before they were 5 y/o.
Now, what should god do (if they existed)? Let the children life and cause overpopulation, which leads to famine and disaster, or kill a lot of children? There's literally no solution.
That was until contraceptives were found. And interestingly, contraceptives exist at roughly the same time that antibiotics exist, thus preventing both high child-mortality and overpopulation.
Funny ideas but completely wrong. Contraceptives existed throughout the human history. And antibiotics were discovered a bit later than Haber dealt with overpopulation problem.
According to Isiah 45:7 it’s C.
“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things”
That's just seems shitty
dualism
The god the Abrahamists have chosen to worship is a weather and war god. So he is a vengeful dick.
When the Israelites were still polytheistic they worshipped, besides this war god, a sun god and a god of fertility in the Pantheon. Yet they’ve chosen to solely worship the war god. Says a lot about them.
we are just bald monkeys, stop pretending otherwise
go fuck a banana!
Fucking Abrahamic religions
He caused it/allowed it to happen because he wants to test YOUR faith and make sure you're cool with needless pain and suffering so long as it means you get to go to heaven/avoid an eternity of torture.
God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs.
Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth!
Their logic would be
C
If something bad happens to someone it’s because they deserved it
“But they were a good person”
They were going to do something terrible
“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things“
Isiah 45:7 King James Version
hear me out.
what if it's actually B and C?
Then it is not worthy of worship.
C sort of implies B or A. If he causes them then he doesn’t prevent them because either he can’t or he doesn’t want to. It would be kind of weird if he caused a terrible thing and then prevented it before it happened.
It's not that deep:
1- In the case of natural evils: C. God causes them, but they are morally neutral from the spiritual perspective. If what matters is salvation and glory to God it doesn't change anything if you died by tornado or by anything else, and inevitable death might even be a net positive individually and to others (Ind: the person might repent about something, social: seeing the frailness of life leads to less self love, while increasing compassion)
2- In the case of human caused evils: B with an asterisk. Given that He has imposed upon Himself the restriction of respecting free will, He won't stop people from doing evil deeds, even though He wants them to do good and He can make them do it. Why God chooses to do it like this is a mistery and doesn't really matter, but it seems to be because He wants people to freely choose to worship Him.
God causes them, but they are morally neutral from the spiritual perspective.
source?
Imagine asking for a source on a philosophical argument lmao
"Yeah, no, Descartes, I'll read it when it's peer reviewed. Yes in LaTeX please"
philosophical argument
You so dense you think I didn't mean The Bible, book whatever, chapter something, verse somesuch?
E. You deserved it
I’m not necessarily a theist, but this overused argument is flawed. It could be that terrible things happen because, for whatever reasons that could be incomprehensible to our teeny human brains, these terrible things happening are necessary to serve a greater good or purpose for the long run.
What that purpose could be, I have no friggen clue. But humanity has near zero understanding of the universe beyond us (I’m talking about the answers to fundamental questions; why are we here? Do we have a purpose for existence? Etc) and to claim that there is 100% nothing existing beyond ourselves is just as ignorant as claiming there is some personalized God directing everything. We have no fucking clue what’s out there, and anything else is the ego talking.
In such a case as you describe, this god either:
A) Would not desire faith, as it has concerns far grander than whatever some malformed ape thinks about it.
Or
B) It would not be worthy of faith, because it has the capacity to reveal these machinations in exchange for this obeisance, and chooses to watch us suffer and still expects us to thank it for our suffering.
Or
C) It would not be worthy of faith, because it has decided to test us, like some cosmic Jigsaw. Fuck that.
I hold with Stephen Fry: if I were to discover that god exists after death, my only response would be "how dare you". If it did exist, it would not be an entity worthy of our faith, let alone love or admiration.
That's a lot of words for have faith.
there is a fucked up fifth answer that works for theists, E. terrible things don't exist
