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Fun fact, if you arrive at this conclusion as an 8 year old in Sunday school at your ultra fundamentalist Baptist Church and proceed to tell the teacher, you get yelled at and spanked by the teacher and your parents! Ask me how I know.
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Yeah, and the Sunday school teacher failed.
One day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you’ll agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half submerged log.
As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen. Mother and children dining upon mother and children.
And that is when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.
-Sir Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals
I had a conversation that ended up like this with someone who was genuinely trying to convert me to Christianity once. He eventually argued that god doesn’t need to be all powerful to be worshipped, since he is at least extremely powerful.
What’s the definition of “all powerful”? Would an all-powerful being need to be able to draw a square without it being a rectangle? Or to build a house without walls?
If the answer is “no”, then I’d argue that the left most arrow/conclusion is logically wrong/misplaced/invalid. Assuming that “free will” is not possible without “evil”.
That’s the thing, it seems too simplistic, though probably is a good start towards something, better understanding I suppose.
Like all planar squares must be rectangles, but curved square nonplanar washers exist… and those neither disprove nor prove the existence of a God (or Gods, or any spiritual beings at all)?:-P
The devil as they say is in the details, like what exactly is evil, in order to go from mere wordplay to true philosophical understanding. imho at least.
One of the funniest things humanity has done is to invent the concept of God as a super entity and then reduce him/them/it to their level.
Why would a super entity be bound by “love” which only humans understand ? Why would “it” have the concept of “evil”, something that humans invented out of fear.
As a species we just need to accept we are just stupid.
And that is why religion is effectively meaningless. We have invented a being full of contradictions, much like ourselves, but declared [it|whatever] perfect besides that. The answer to the paradox is that there is no God.
People should learn to strive for good without the threat of eternal punishment from a being of their invention, otherwise those individuals were never good to begin with, and their imaginary all powerful, all knowing and judgemental god would punish them regardless.
Define “good”.
Just being the devil advocate here: I disagree with the “destroy Satan” part, Satan isn’t the definition of evil, he is only the HR department that deal with the evil people, and the part of God not stopping evil, maybe he don’t because it go against free will? About the not loving, he promises a perfect infinity world after all of this, after a few centuries of perfection you don’t care/remember I guess
I think the fundamental issue with this is that it presumes that our understanding of morality is perfect. If an all-knowing, all-powerful God acted contrary to our understanding of morality, or allowed something to happen contrary to our understanding of morality it would make sense for us to perceive that as undermining our understanding of God, making him imperfect. An all-knowing, all-encomposing God may have an understanding that we as mortals are incapable of understanding or perceiving.
It presumes to know a perfect morality while also arguing that morality can be subjective. It doesn’t make sense, just like an irrational belief in a God. I think the best way to go about this is to allow people to believe how they want and stop trying to convince people one way another about their beliefs. People get to believe differently and that is not wrong.
Edit: holy shit those reddit comments are full of /r/iamverysmart material lmfao
I don’t know if I misunderstood you, but “making millions of people suffer horribly and needlessly for no fault of their own might just be the most ethical thing there is, you never know, so let’s not draw any conclusions about God allowing that to happen.” just seems like a rather unconvincing line of thought to me. It’s essentially just saying “God is always right, accept that”
I guess god just gave us the moral understanding that his (in)actions are insanely immoral to test our unquestioned loyalty to him, or he just likes a little trolling. Or maybe he just doesn’t exist…
Any God that could prevent the suffering of millions and still allow it is not a God worthy of your worship.
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A shame you didn’t reply to my comment from earlier, since the afterlife argument is used quite often in this instance while not actually resolving the underlying problem:
One answer I’ve heard from religious people is that life after death will make up for it all. But that doesn’t make sense either. If heaven/paradise/whatever puts life into such small perspective that our suffering doesn’t matter, then our lives truly don’t mean anything. It’s just a feelgood way of saying god couldn’t care less about child cancer - because in the grand scheme of things it’s irrelevant anyway.
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All fair. You’re simply having an entirely different conversation here. Should we respect people’s beliefs and religious affiliations? Sure. Don’t think anyone in this thread doubted that (or I haven’t seen anyone at least). It’s just not the point.
Maybe the questions of “what’s the truth” or “how far does logic get us in terms of religious statements” are irrelevant to you. Then this post simply isn’t for you. Some people, me included, find those questions interesting and worthwhile - although completely separate from your issue about respecting beliefs, illogical as they may be.
As far as this second issue goes: Based on the premises that bad stuff is indeed happening and people are suffering from it, the Epicurean paradox in my opinion very neatly explains why the abrahamic god cannot exist. I have no problem with people believing in him anyway; people also believe in fairies and ghosts and Santa Claus. Good for them. In the past I’ve occasionally encountered attempts to answer the Epicurean paradox from a religious perspective that struck me as very unkind; especially the attempt to belittle human suffering in itself. They come down to the notion that the suffering in this life is simply not that relevant in the grand scheme of things; it will be compensated or forgotten in the afterlife anyway; it’s necessary; it’s part of gods plan; or in any other way either actually good or just not that important. So in short: We get ignorant towards human suffering in order to avoid the paradox of it’s existence. But by far most religious people don’t think like that. They don’t think about the Epicurean paradox at all, or they simply don’t think it through. And that’s okay.
It’s also okay not to find any of this interesting. To me personally, my life, my relationship with myself and with the world, those questions were immensely important. Which is why I occasionally still participate in those conversations.
I think the fundamental issue with this is that it presumes that our understanding of morality is perfect.
By that measure, all religions have the fundamental issue of presuming that they have any actual knowledge or understanding of their god(s).
An all-knowing, all-encomposing God may have an understanding that we as mortals are incapable of understanding or perceiving.
That being could make us understand.
“Uhhh mysterious ways is why children get cancer”
This is a copout and you’re a silly little guy
If you skip the “evil” part and just start talking about “things that are bad for us humans” it’s still true though. Sure, maybe child cancer is somehow moral or good from the perspective of an immortal entity, but in this case this entity is obviously operating on a basis that is completely detached from what’s meaningful to us. Our lives, our suffering, our hardship - obviously none of all this is relevant enough to a potential god to do anything about it. Or he would, but can’t. Hence the Epicurean paradox.
One answer I’ve heard from religious people is that life after death will make up for it all. But that doesn’t make sense either. If heaven/paradise/whatever puts life into such small perspective that our suffering doesn’t matter, then our lives truly don’t mean anything. It’s just a feelgood way of saying god couldn’t care less about child cancer - because in the grand scheme of things it’s irrelevant anyway.
To us humans, our lives aren’t meaningless. Child cancer isn’t irrelevant. We care about what’s happening in this life and to the people we care about. How could a god be of any relevance to us if our understanding of importance, of value, of good and bad, is so meaningless to them? Why would we ever construct and celebrate organized religion around something so detached from ourselves? The answer is: We wouldn’t.
Either god is relevant to our lives or he isn’t. Reality tells us: He isn’t. Prayers don’t work, hardship isn’t helped, suffering isn’t stopped. Thought through to it’s inevitable conclusion the Epicurean paradox is logical proof that god as humans used to think about him doesn’t exist, and if something of the sorts exists, it’s entirely irrelevant to us.
Double this.
Basically God’s evil != Human’s evil
What if I disagree with the premise?
I don’t know, have you been to West Bank?
This presupposes that “evil” exists as a universal concept that a god is bound, versus a god that exists outside of concepts of morality.
The god that gave His faithful the ten commandments and has His church promise heaven or hell depending on behavior exists outside of morality ? He literally defines it.
Yes, this. This supposes that either:
A. There is the existence good and evil that supersedes the authority of God ( which means God cannot be sovereign over morality )
B. I define good and evil and then judge “god” based on my definition ( which from a moral standpoint would actually make me god )
I suspect that this really isn’t a paradox for most people because they either:
A. Look at the world and see horrible things they don’t like and then want to judge God for them ( with what authority ? )
B. They don’t believe in God to begin with but like to use this chart to re-enforce their belief that they are logically correct.
A God that literally defines good and evil by his existence ( I AM ) breaks this chart.
Kind of falls apart if rejecting the idea of objective good and evil and interpreting the parable of the fruit of knowledge in Eden as the inheritance of a relative knowledge of good and evil for oneself which inherently makes any shared consensus utopia an impossibility.
In general, we have very bizarre constraints on what we imagine for the divine, such as it always being a dominant personality.
Is God allowed to be a sub? Where’s the world religion built around that idea?
What about the notion that the variety of life is not a test for us to pass/fail, but more like a Rorsarch test where it allows us to determine for ourselves what is good or not?
Yes, antiquated inflexible ideas don’t hold up well to scrutiny. But adopting those as the only idea to contrast with equally inflexible consideration just seems like a waste of time for everyone involved, no?
We know paradoxes exist in the real world. Therefore proving that the existence of God is paradoxical does not prove that God doesn’t exist. It simply proves that God is paradoxical. Which most people knew already.
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- Why should God want only the good?
Because otherwise god could not be considered all-god or all benevolent
- Why should the test be to let God know about us? It could be about letting us know about ourself.
Because if his is all powerful, god could have made us with that knowledge already acquired
Also the branch that are not yes/no does not cover all possibility. Therefore, this is not a paradox but rather an incomplet thought
Can you add any that would actually not end up conflicting with “not all powerful”, “not all knowing” or “not all good”?
evil exists -> no
Honestly that’s probably the only way out of the problem of evil.
That said you are on a path of ethical relativism, and from a practical standpoint it’s fucked up beyond belief.
Also so much of religion is founded on the good/ evil dynamic that if this was removed, everything else would crumble.
Are you 16 and this is deep?
It’s actually a really important subject and very deep if you actually think about it. The problem of evil has challenged philosophers for centuries, and apologists have not been able to square the circle of evil, all knowing, all powerful and all loving.
