Maybe god does prevent Evil and the Universe is totally just and fair. The problem is humans thinking their version of Evil is the correct one. Maybe.
That’s basically what the church will say when asking questions along this line.
“His intentions are simply beyond our comprehension.”
While at the same time saying he has the same morals we should uphold.
There is no good and evil, just people trying to justify their decisions as rational. There is nothing else required, to fuck up the world, just people and their desires to “help” and “protect” everyone from everything.
Maybe we are the freaking rogue demons
Or maybe she’s born with it.
Or maybe it’s maybaline.
Maybe it’s sulferine
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I haven’t watched TV in nearly 20 years, and it’s still the first thing that pops in my head when a bunch of "maybe"s are listed off.
Now you get to suffer with me! :V
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Sorry for reddit link
Common* christian theology posits that God is a perfect judge of law and fact, seeing as she has both infinite patience, infinite subjective time, and accurate knowledge of everyone’s points of view.
“Why does evil persist on Earth then” comes down to either said evil being necessary for some unseen purpose, said evil being irrelevant to God’s plans, or said evil being the consequence of some mortal privilege. Or some combination thereof.
There has been a lot of christian thought about why evil persists, and settling on an answer to it is essentially the base of all persistent ecumenical schisms. Other religions add even greater complexity, because once you examine perspectives off the abeahamic tree you quickly find that not even “Good” is consistently defined.
The moral and philosophical questions don’t get much easier if you remove God from the equation, or even if you adopt a nihilistic “only the momentary physical now matters” perspective.
If you don’t believe me, try coming up with an answer to “why is killing bad” that you can get agreement on. (Not just “is killing bad,” but an actual casual why.)
Morality is only made complex because humans like inserting their ego into things.
No, all morality is are the behaviours that benefit us as a social species, put to language and culture.
Why is rape bad? Theft bad? Indiscriminate killing bad? Because if we did these things we’d be unable to use our unique species’ power to overcome hardships and thrive; creating and maintaining social groups that allow for the division of tasks.
*: and by “common” I mean “as I believe most Christians understand it.”. I’m sure some don’t, and that there’s at least one sect that would call me funny names for saying anything.
I just wish we could collectively realize the whole enterprise is epistemologically bankrupt.
It is okay to stop trying to apply reason once you have encountered the first unreconcilable contradiction.
There are no such things as unreconcilable contradictions.
There’s a zen story about that
Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbors came around to commiserate. They said, “We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.” The farmer said, “Maybe.”
The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!” The farmer again said, “Maybe.”
The following day his son tried to break one of the horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbors then said, “Oh dear, that’s too bad,” and the farmer responded, “Maybe.”
The next day the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. Again all the neighbors came around and said, “Isn’t that great!” Again, he said, “Maybe.”
This.
Love it.
I dont care whether ‘evil’ is prevented, I care whether undue suffering could be prevented.
If the bar is so high, that God’s only obligation is preventing Cthulhu from fucking out butts, then he’s just as much of a cunt as squid-daddy.
I’m suddenly both curious and terrified to go and check if there’s any rule 42 of Squid Daddy.
Or God is also evil. Who says God needs to be nice?
Not that I believe one exists.
Certainly, that was the Gnostics viewpoint. It has as much merit as any other
The stories about god are a copy of a copy of a copy. Dumbed down. Rendered in terms of popular metaphor. Light years from the original report by the weird old tripping mystic in the cave.
Imagine 1000 years from now. Quantum physics gets conflated with SpongeBob SquarePants.
The photons both live in a pineapple and are under the sea at the same time unless you observe it, then the crabbypatty waveform collapses.
No, this is Patrick!
There is no God.
I saw a post in atheism mostly about this. I decided not to post. I don’t believe in forcing my views on other people who clearly didn’t ask for them.
Well, we have a word for god so we must have a concept of god.
Even if there’s no objective phenomenon which corresponds to the concept, the subjective experiences alone are worthy of attention and consideration
We also have a concept of Russell’s Teapot, which is far more likely to exist. That doesn’t mean that the possibility of the Teapot actually existing is worthy of attention or consideration.
It appears that your post is making an unfounded assumption as support for the conclusion that a deity exists and has certain qualities. That’s not how that works. Starting with a desired conclusion, then building a set of “if this then that” premises may be logically valid, but it’s not logically sound.
No, I’m totally not a believer in a deity or anything like that. Given the quantity (and quality) of internet discussions around the topic I can understand how you might have gotten to that idea.
Personally I’m more interested in how humans arrive at their different ideas of evil, whilst holding very firm to their particular views, a process which is much like how people invented their gods only it also happens amongst the athiests.
Edit. Wanted to add that people don’t build massive monuments to teapots or build cultural identities around them, so far as I know, so I think you’ve raised a false equivalence there.
My position is that “evil”, and its counterpart “good”, are human concepts that imply agency. People have agency, and the actions of people can be described as “good” or “evil” in this way.
Human brains really like things to happen for a reason, to the point where if something happens without a clearly comprehended reason, a reason will be invented to fill that void, and it doesn’t matter whether that reason is actually true.
… only it also happens amongst the athiests.
I’m not sure what you mean by that bit.
Sorry, I’ll clarify!
I mean that atheists engage in the meaning making process you describe, so they have clear ideas of evil to help them with that.
Whilst divinity is largely the preserve of the theists, in their myriad variety, evil is a moral concept invented and defined by all individuals and groups, whether Consciously or unconsciously.
That was clarification?
Expansion with that intention, certainly.
That would depend on your experience, surely. And experience varies.
I meant, of course everything depends on which version of what you consider. This reasoning also works if we have a different version of what God, or good or humans are.
Or a different definition of “problem”.
That’s basically the Euthyphro dilemma.
If good, evil and god were phenomena that could be observed directly then we’d understand better through that.
And that is arguably the case. I mean, the literature is full of god-sightings. And people have feelings of good and evil too.
It’s interesting to consider the definition of real in that sense then, because many experiences do not have an objective cause, or at least not one that directly correlates to the subjective experience.
God, evil, ghosts, happiness. They’re real In the sense that we can experience them, however, the shared understanding largely comes from an internal place, a necessary agreement of experience with the concepts of its objects.
Some gods are, by human standards, more evil than others.
“If you think the point in life is to be happy and live long I can see how you’d be confused”
Not sure where I heard it but I think of it often.
I’m a father and I think of god the same way I think of being a parent. I want my kids to learn things and I want them to return home and tell me about it.
There’s no god and playing around with angles how and why a god exists can poison your person
I think I can handle it. 😄
Poison in a sense that you start believing in god. Poison not in the sense there’s some dark mysterious evil thing.
I guess you’re gone already, which is fine 😅
I am a dark mysterious thing!
Evil and pain/suffering/discomfort are not the same. Evil has an intention behind it. Where is the evil in dying cause I slipped in the shower, or the evil in crushing your toes cause I’m heavy and inattentive and you’re dainty and I accidentally stepped over your feet? At most you could say there’s evil in natural disasters, but the world was going from A to B, we just didn’t know our world enough and suffered because of it (and that’s why now we have seismology!), for instance, but since when does nature have conscience? The world, compared to a garden with no danger no fear like Paradise, is evidently chaotic, but does that mean it’s “flawed” or just the only way things could work the way God designed the universe? So, at most I’ll accept some disagreement with the fact that God put us in a place that’s chaotic, but haven’t we risen to the task of understanding and using the universe to our whims? They put a man on the moon!
On the other hand, however, is everything that’s man-made. All the evils, from starvation to genocide, from greed to rape, this is all the result of misguided free will. And God teaches us (by the pen, so read) on what we should do to control it/us. You can’t possibly put that on God, unless you wanted us to be basically sims/robots…
That’s certainly one definition of evil, yes
Of course if you believe “God” set all of this in motion and with foreknowledge then even those seemingly random events have god’s intent behind them, yes?
Of course if you believe “God” set all of this in motion and with foreknowledge then even those seemingly random events have god’s intent behind them, yes?
No, it means that you believe that “even those seemingly random events have god’s intent behind them”. A person’s sincerely held belief is not necessarily objectively true.
I don’t think that’s true, if you see what I said I was explaining it as a conditional statement, rather than a belief.
Your comment as stated, paraphrased, says that “if you believe A, then B is true.”
A belief in A does not make B true. While you may have meant “if you believe A, then you believe B is true”, that’s not what you said.
Is this what Thomas Aquinas was talking about when he was discussing dancing on the head of a pin? 😁
So, Is there a C?
Like, if A (god set this in motion with foreknowledge) is true then B (god did so with intention to arrive at the anticipated outcomes) is not also true?
Is there another answer? God set All this in motion knowing what would happen, and yet the outcome was not his intention? 🤪
… if A is true … then B …
Okay, for starters, that’s different from “if you believe A is true, then B”. “If A then B” can be logically sound without A being true - or with A being false (those are two different things). In such a case, it would follow that B cannot be said to be true, because A is either false or cannot be shown to be true. Side note, if there is no way to demonstrate that A is false, then A is “unfalsifiable”, and the whole thing is not even worth considering.
Anyway, if A is unfalsifiable or false, then B is undefined. B would be true if A were true, provided that B necessarily follows from A. For this case, you’d need to demonstrate that A is true for further consideration to be warranted.
