The Problem of Evil

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
141

I would like you to tell me which christian theologial (or person in general) used these 3 terms. Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnibenevolant.
to describe God? I think Indescribable by our puny language would be a better “adescription”

What does all knowing mean: Knowing all possible quantum states for the universe?

What does all powerful mean? Able to be all good and yet allow evil simultaneously? It would mean that wouldn’t it. God’s not omnipotent though the way you present the term, and no one REALLY believes that.

All good? A tautology.

You are totally confused by human language.

Why don’t you try tackling:

“All absolute statements are false” first.

At least you admit that humans have free will by believing that logic is valid. Logically, free will leads to choice which leads to value which leads to God.

142

What? Are we arguing whether or not you can have morals without them being imposed from an almighty being?

Idiots.

143

“Logically, free will leads to choice which leads to value which leads to God.”

What?

vroom: who are idiots? Are you saying that one side of the argument is populated by idiots, or that the mere act of arguing this point is idiotic?

144

God, guilt or paranoia. Animals don’t make moral choices by my and standard psychological definitions. Not imposed by a higher power-defined by it. Morals are not created by humans, they are apart from us and I don’t think can be deduced from the laws of physics-so they are defined by a standard outside of the physical universe. Is there another possibility? They are either created by us, are present in the laws of physics, or come from an outside standard right. My definition of morals is that they are not human creations, belief in free will choice within quantum variants in the universe implies that they do not reside in the laws of physics because moral and immoral acts can not be distinguished from each other by the laws of physics. Give me an alternative.

145

[quote]Grey Area wrote:
mindeffer01: I didn’t “miss the point”. I was questioning why God would allow Job to be tested in this way. God himself says that Job has done nothing wrong, yet he allows him to be persecuted and tortured. I know that he was testing Job’s faith, but I fail to see why it was necessary, and how this could possibly be justified in a supposedly benevolent being. [/quote]
The central point of contention on this thread is whether or not God has the upper hand over the adversarial forces of evil.In the book of Job this whole scenario is caried out to prove to satan that there is nothing he can do to one of Gods faithfull, and therefore powerless.As it is written, God is quite confident of this fact,and lets the game begin.This is just a guess, but if God didn’t want to illustrate this to satan, God would have dismissed him. I guess he just needed a super-natural smackdown.

146

[quote]Grey Area wrote:
“Logically, free will leads to choice which leads to value which leads to God.”

What?

vroom: who are idiots? Are you saying that one side of the argument is populated by idiots, or that the mere act of arguing this point is idiotic?[/quote]

This was poorly phrased. I meant to say that if you believe in free will then you can begin to ask the question of whether there are morally right and wrong choices, and that the concept of morally right and wrong choices can not be explained by the laws of physics or as a human creation in my opinion. Therefore, they should be attributed to SOMETHING ELSE. I liberally used the term God.

“Moral feelings” can be explained biologically. Because humans developed a moral delusion (or guilt feelings or paranoia) we came up with sets of what we called morals. This allowed humans to be successful in evolution because when there is chaos and you don’t know if the person next to you is going to kill you, or run a red light at smash into you etc, we have more negative stress. Basically, Moral feelings (MFs) allowed us to develop society which of course lead to the internet etc.

The prob is that what most atheists call morals are not. They are pragmatic and self centered. Selfless acts in spite of disbelief in a higher power are by definition INSANE. So I would posit that you can have a true set of morals (absolutes independent of the pragmatic or self centered outcome) and be an atheist, but that you would also be either biologically/logically insane.
I guess you could also say that moral acts performed by theists are self centered. Again, this is one argument that I have never heard a good response to.

147

[quote]Professor X wrote:

[the Book of Job] describes the place of Satan within the construct of our reality, the hierarchy of his place before God, and our places on the chessboard. It doesn’t need my explanation. A better question might be, what is your understanding of it?[/quote]

The Book of Job makes me doubt if human beings are capable of apprehending God at all, much less of being certain of his existence or his intentions. Two things suggest this to me:

First, the content of Job’s vision is entirely natural: No angelic beings with four faces with wheels attached to them underneath a throne, no burning bush, nothing that could not be interpreted to be a simple consequence of the way the world exists. Behemoth is because that’s the way the world is; Leviathan IS, because that’s the world is. Job is miserable because, well, that’s just the way the world is.

The second thing: This, it seems to me, is where Job’s vision REALLY diverges from those of other prophets. All prophets see things in terms of things they see in the world, because they are human beings with eyes. But many of them imagine that their visions are communications from a human-like entity just beyond the scope of their apprehension. Job does not seem to me to believe that. God does not tell him what to do, offer him any consolation, or even claim that Job’s suffering is conducive to the greater good of the world as He sees it; He simply confronts Job with his insignificance.

I would like to bring up again the suggestion what Thomas Waterless raised earlier, because I don’t think people appreciated the importance of it:

We should consider the possibility that God and divine standards of good and evil are entirely beyond the scope of our apprehension.

148

Where do you get this gem? This is utter bullshit.

I’ll counter with an unpopular concept which should be just as stupid.

Theists, deriving their morals from a book, are useless at applying morals to situations not explicitly described. They’ve never had to deduce purposes for behavior and are unable to behave appropriately when faced with situations not explicitly defined by their own faith.

People, generally, begin to learn morals and behavior well before they are indoctrinated into a religion. Simple principles and beliefs, short of a religion, are enough to develop a mature set of behavioral constraints dealing with lifes situations.

God has never spoken to me and I’m not willing to trust hearsay from very unsophisticated people from two thousand years ago. Most of the people alive today are deluded idiots, why should I assume it was better two thousand years ago.

It doesn’t take a belief in God to know the difference between right and wrong - to understand that which is evil.

[edited to spell hearsay, rumor or gossip, correctly]

149

I didn’t read the entire post so excuse me if this has been said.

It is “evil”, the bad in our lives, that allowed human beings to move forward. It is adversity and suffering that drives us to better our world. I doubt human’s would have even developed language had everything they needed been provided for them (this is an extreme example but I think you get my point).

I am not quite sure if a god does exist but I do not believe the existance of “evil” contradicts the god Christian’s speak of. If I ever believe a god does exist, I would love him for giving me an imperfect world, an imperfect body, and an imperfect mind to better for myself and others. Otherwise, what point is there to life?

150

[quote]vroom wrote:
The prob is that what most atheists call morals are not. They are pragmatic and self centered. Selfless acts in spite of disbelief in a higher power are by definition INSANE.

Where do you get this gem? This is utter bullshit.

I’ll counter with an unpopular concept which should be just as stupid.

Theists, deriving their morals from a book, are useless at applying morals to situations not explicitly described. They’ve never had to deduce purposes for behavior and are unable to behave appropriately when faced with situations not explicitly defined by their own faith.

People, generally, begin to learn morals and behavior well before they are indoctrinated into a religion. Simple principles and beliefs, short of a religion, are enough to develop a mature set of behavioral constraints dealing with lifes situations.

God has never spoken to me and I’m not willing to trust hearsay from very unsophisticated people from two thousand years ago. Most of the people alive today are deluded idiots, why should I assume it was better two thousand years ago.

It doesn’t take a belief in God to know the difference between right and wrong - to understand that which is evil.

[edited to spell hearsay, rumor or gossip, correctly][/quote]

  1. Give me an example of a selfless sane act. I think this argument came from Pliny but not sure.

  2. What is evil? Is evil a human (mental) invention? Is it explainable by the laws of physics? If not, it falls into the OTHER category, as does good. We don’t have to use the G word.

  3. The bible is a teething ring.

  4. Can morals as you define them be explained by behaviorism? By physics?

151

[quote]vroom wrote:

It doesn’t take a belief in God to know the difference between right and wrong - to understand that which is evil.

[edited to spell hearsay, rumor or gossip, correctly][/quote]

Vroom, my perception is that an atheist would logically have to assume that any concept of moral right or wrong is simply an illusion. To an atheist, the only thing seperating us from a cockroach is a few thousand years of evolution. That means, following that train of thought, any belief that our lives are more important than the life of that cockroach is just a hallucination based on our vain attempt to make ourselves more important than we are. Without a concept of a force of a higher being or the concept of an ultimate right and ultimate wrong, any concept of morality is nothing but smoke that we just made up to justify our existance. It means nothing. That is the only logical way to think if you assume that any belief in a higher power is an illusion. You can’t have it both ways. Anything else would make you agnostic and not atheist.

My belief, or understanding, is that anyone with strong morals and values who claims to not believe in God or any higher power feels some form of being a part of something much larger than they are. They simply refuse to give this feeling a name or accept the concept of GOD.

152

[quote]Ross Hunt wrote:

The Book of Job makes me doubt if human beings are capable of apprehending God at all, much less of being certain of his existence or his intentions. Two things suggest this to me.[/quote]

If you meant “comprehending”, then we are in agreement. However, I believe God gave us enough proof to believe that he exists. I have no belief that I understand all of God’s intentions or plans. I am sure that is far beyond my own comprehension and I have never claimed otherwise.

153

Prof,

The joke is, if there isn’t a God, then all this talk of a higher purpose or a higher being defining morality is all baloney.

If you can choose to believe there is a God, why can I not choose to believe that some things are “right” and some things are “wrong”.

If I choose to believe some types of behavior are better than others, who are you to say I must then believe in some concept of God?

A lot of people alive today have never really developed a faith in God or anything else, yet they still have all sorts of beliefs. Believing things is not only a possibility after having been exposed to some concept of God.

Trying to claim some type of logical conundrum is simply a farce, especially if your own system of beliefs is not based on logic. No human is a pure logical entity, we all believe some things… even if it is only that the sun will rise tomorrow.

154

If we all believe in “something”, how can you claim to not believe in anything? That is what an ATHEIST would believe. Notice the “a”. That means without. No one is saying that you have to believe in the Christian concept of God to have a based morality, but you do have to have some kind of concept of an ultimate right and an ultimate wrong if for no other reason than for you to be able to grade your own levels of right and wrong. As in, it is less wrong for me to drink straight out the carton when I know my girlfriend hates that and more wrong for me to use that same carton as a blunt object to kill her cat…not that I would. Atheists seem to have a problem with calling that ultimate right “God”. However, that has not stopped many of them from treating anyone with a belief in God as if they are chasing fairy tales and that they are less grounded than they are. Do you see the conflict in that thought process? If not, then this conversation might as well end.

155

I think what Prof X and I know what I’m saying is that that IS our definition of a theist.

156

[quote]Professor X wrote:
Ross Hunt wrote:

The Book of Job makes me doubt if human beings are capable of apprehending God at all, much less of being certain of his existence or his intentions.

If you meant “comprehending”, then we are in agreement. However, I believe God gave us enough proof to believe that he exists. [/quote]

No, I mean that we aren’t capable of telling whether God exists. Now, by “God” I mean:

A being who is the cause of all things and whose thought and will are similar to human thought and will.

The reason I qualify my definition in this way is because is just because I don’t want to call ‘The Nature of the Universe’ or ‘The Way Things Are’ or ‘The Laws of Physics’ God.

The Book of Job seems to me to confront the problem that we can’t be sure whether all the things we see around us every day are being willed to exist by some being like ourselves in some way, or whether the cause of their existence is just a given that’s beyond our comprehension.

Regarding Morality:

If human beings cannot apprehend God, I can’t see how right or wrong can be anything but arbitrary creations.

HOWEVER: In the context of the world we live in, these arbitrary creations can be practically absolute. No healthy living being that we know of likes to suffer grevious pain, so we try not to cause living beings pain; the fact that this is contingent upon the fact that all the beings we know of posess bodies susceptible to pain doesn’t suffice as an excuse to hurt people unnecessarily.

When one begins to talk of other things, though, morality begins to get more complicated. Take pleasure, for example. Most people in the world today who post on this website (myself included) hold that eating many meals a day is the good way to eat one’s food. We have many reasons for this, and we would regard the ancients, who ate but two or sometimes only one meal a day, as ignorant primitives. We would point to their stunted growth, their poor athletic accomplishments, and to the supposed psychological sickness of their societies.
But the ancients would regard our dietary habits as depraved. Many of them used to make it a rule that one would never sit down to eat without having worked up a sweat first. They would acknowledge that our diets make us superior in body, but they would hold that they makes us effeminate and weak in soul, obsessed with things of the body, devoid of discipline, unfit - by and large - for war. They could point to a lot of effeminate people in our nation as examples.

What I was trying to indicate by this example was the sort of matters in which one can observe decisive changes in the common understanding of what is right and what is wrong over the course of time.

Now I’m going to eat some more cottage cheese.

157

No, I would disagree. Right and wrong are independent concepts from the concept of a greater power, in my opinion.

If you choose to believe it defines a God, that is your right.

The simple concepts of empathy and efficiency are enough.

However, I think it is very significant to realize that being able to believe in things, whether right or wrong, or God, or that the grass will grow in spring is simply necessary. Humans live in an environment where they don’t know everything, so they must simply guess, assume or believe. The ability to act without full knowledge is quite simply a valuable survival trait.

There is no requirement that there be a God for people to do this. It is also no more provable than whether or not there is a God.

I’d suggest this is just the same argument as whether or not there is a God, just under another guise.

158

[quote]Professor X wrote:
My belief, or understanding, is that anyone with strong morals and values who claims to not believe in God or any higher power feels some form of being a part of something much larger than they are. They simply refuse to give this feeling a name or accept the concept of GOD. [/quote]

First of all, Professor X, I’d like to say I’ve really grown to respect you and your posts, and I think you’ve brought several discussions to much higher intellectual level than they could have been without your contributions. You?re also very careful with the quality of your language which is admirable, especially in this day and age. So thank you for that.

But I need to disagree strongly with you in regards to your statement above.

I’m an atheist, and I have strong morals and values. Not because I believe in God, or even in the existence of a “higher intelligence” - but because I’m just wired like that. As a lot of people are. It’s part of my and their personality. Why? Because it was one of the things that allowed us to survive and to evolve.

And you don’t need to be an anthropologist to know that - any person who has at least some knowledge of Game Theory or maybe Microeconomics will tell you that cooperation benefits everyone and hence having high moral standards and values will ultimately benefit everyone, including yourself. Having no morals or values is self-destructive.

So they do mean something for an atheist ? they?re just a good policy to have in life, and ultimately very self-rewarding.

If at least some of us weren’t wired that way we would probably be extinct.

But you ARE right in associating the two. I just believe you do have it reversed: humans developed faith as a way to justify the morals they are wired to have, not the opposite.

To me, faith is essentially a mechanism we developed as a species in order to justify our existence and our day to day decisions. We don’t need faith in order to be moral and human, but a lot of people are happier having faith because it makes the world - and even themselves - easier to “swallow”. It’s part of their “mental hygiene”. And a good one ? for many people going to church or reading a passage of the Bible is much more effective ? and, if you don?t tithe, cheaper - than going to a shrink.

But haven’t you observed that people will use faith and - unfortunately ? religious dogma - to justify their decisions, rather than the opposite?

All the Christians I know selectively choose to “forget” certain parts of the bible. They use the other parts of the bible to justify their actions after they have decided who they are or, rather, want to be. They interpret the Bible and choose the parts of it who match who they are or who they want to be.

How many Christians do you know that divorced without the reasons or consequences that the Bible dictates? Or, even for the ones who did stay married, how many Christian women choose to ignore Paul?s misogynist ramblings in 1 Corinthians? Or all the people with a fish on the back of their cars speeding away at 90 mph because they?re late for church?

Do I blame them or judge them for that? No. I?d much rather have them divorce, speak whenever they want to and use their hair as they wish than to follow such anti-natural principles. And speed away, because I don?t like slow drivers. And I still respect their faith because I honestly believe it’s in their nature - as humans - to have faith, like I feel it?s natural for them to want to divorce or change their hair style. I just see through it and realize that your faith has a minimal - or even no - impact in how moral or ?nice? you are.

Your faith does, however, help keep you sane and confident about yourself ? that?s why I mentioned before I respect people?s faith if it makes them stronger ? because I believe that?s faith?s purpose, for those who have it. And it can in fact help a lot: many of the people that I consider great leaders or great inspirations were or are strong believers in God, and that did make them stronger.

But in the end, Faith is a part of your personality, not its driver.

Of course I could now start talking about all the people whose faith makes them stronger in a bad way ? because it makes them delusional and confident in fundamentally immoral or wrong decisions (like many religious fundamentalists and zealots), but I?m trying to keep this post positive because you personally strike me as someone whose faith brings you strength in a positive way ? and I don?t want to undermine that.

159

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

  1. Give me an example of a selfless sane act. I think this argument came from Pliny but not sure.[/quote]

Tonight when I came into work, there was an old lady standing in front of the elevators. She looked lost, and even though it’s not my job, I asked her if she knew where she was going. She replied that she was looking for her sister in the intensive care unit. I said “okay, let’s go find her” so I made a few phone calls, and walked her to the proper ICU (we have several). This resulted in me being ten minutes late to work tonight, and my co-workers heckled me, but I don’t regret what I did in any way.

There are many things which are human inventions which are not explained by the laws of the physical world. A short list: the meaning conveyed by language, the emotions communicated by art, any moral or qualitative judgement of any kind about anything. The fact that I might think a spanking is good thing vs. someone who thinks that there’s nothing to be gleaned from having a woman decked out in leather slapping their ass with a paddle is a good example.

This is odd coming from a theist, but maybe I can see what you’re getting at. If the bible is a teething ring, which infers that those who follow it blindly are a kind of “spiritual children”, what is the makeup of a “spiritual adult”? Hmmm…

I think I did a pretty good job of this in my earlier post. You don’t need a “higher power” and promises of an afterlife to reap the rewards of living a moral life. It is something you can experience every day, and it feels pretty good sometimes. That’s why I do it.

160

[quote]hspder wrote:
I’m an atheist, and I have strong morals and values. Not because I believe in God, or even in the existence of a “higher intelligence” - but because I’m just wired like that. As a lot of people are. It’s part of my and their personality. Why? Because it was one of the things that allowed us to survive and to evolve.[/quote]

I seriously doubt it is because you are “just wired like that” that you have strong values and standards. We develop our values and standards from those who raise us and our peer groups. That is understood by anyone who has studied the most basic psychology course. You don’t have those values because of evolution. If someone stuck you in the woods as a baby and you were raised by wolves, you would not have the exact same values that you do now. I would also venture that had you been raised surrounded by a TRUE understanding of God (and by that I mean one based in what is written and not hidden behind faults of men who speak for him…who have misled many people)you might have more respect for the concept. My parents raised me to be an independent thinker. Yes, I went to church with them growing up (pentecostal)…but I have also gone to a catholic church and a Buddhist temple while in high school, for no other reason than to get a deeper understanding of things that were not based in the religion in which I was raised. I did that by myself (inspired mostly because I went to school with kids of many different backgrounds and beliefs). The only thing I take offense to is those who have put NO effort at all into researching a belief that they seem to hate past looking up others who simply support their own lack of belief. I find that insulting and I think that message has been made clear. Either way, I respect how you responded.