Could A Good God Permit So Much Suffering?
- Thread starter Hume
- Start date
If free will contains within it the opportunity to suffer eternal torment for errors made in a finite lifespan I'm thinking free will ain't much of a gift.
Evil is a religious concept, I'm not sure why atheists are setting up this objective standard of absolute good and absolute evil.
If we have free will, then we ourselves are responsible for evil.
Sure, God could take away our agency and force us to make ethically moral decisions in all cases. Then we would be robots, not free moral agents. We wouldn't even be human if life was ideal and free of evil, adversity, suffering. Charity, empathy, mercy, repentance, justice wouldn't exist in a life without adversity and suffering.
IBDaMann
Well-known member
This is a waste of time. Religions are irrational (simply meaning that they do not have a rational basis) and thus there is no point in discussing "logical problems" of religious belief. A Christian will tell you that he believes that a man rose from the dead. How much time of your life are you willing to argue the "logical problem" of believing that a dead man returned to life? You won't ever get that time back.
Correct, presuming you are speaking within the context of rational, atheistic philosophy. Enter religious belief, however, and all bets are off. I was a teenager when I got in trouble telling a priest that he can't believe in a trinity ... because 3 cannot equal 1, and that it was a CONTRADICTION, not some sort of "great mystery." I learned my lesson rather quickly that religion is not subject to the same rigorous adherence to logic, and that religious people, especially priests, don't simply capitulate to airtight logic that runs counter to their theism. I was not wrong, but neither was the priest; religion is unfalsifiable.
IBDaMann
Well-known member
Why do atheists have the concept then? I am an atheist. I have the concept of evil. Killing living humans who have not committed any crime is evil; no religion needed.
You have some explaining to do.
Why are you pretending to speak for atheists?
Possibly. Who is "we"?
I tend to believe that only those responsible for evil are responsible for evil.
Do we have agency? That's quite an assumption to be making without any support.
Aren't we robots? You had a thread in which you tried to argue your theorem that humans have free will, but I recall that you failed miserably in supporting your assertion. Has anything changed since then?
Would we be superhuman instead? Who consitutes "we" again?
You weren't ever planning on supporting any of your assertions, right?
T. A. Gardner
Thread Killer
Well, the concept of what happens after death varies greatly by religion. The version you give is only one of many.
Agreed. But it is a legitimate version of a religion, one practiced by many. And how do we know they are wrong? We don't. That's the joy of religion: there is no way to know if it is true or false since it is built to never be questioned.
And it also shows that religions tend to be whatever the believer feels most comfortable with. Which is why there are so many different variants of nominally the same religion.
Yakuda
Verified User
You dont read so well do you?
Yakuda
Verified User
And I'm sure you've been told a billion times the "infinite punishment" you describe is chosen by the person not thrust upon anyone by God. "Infinite punishment" is what you've chosen. God's not interested in your woke ideology. With God, choices actually have consequences and you won't whine your way out of them by saying how terrible he is. God doesn't apologize and you can't shame him like you people do when someone disagrees with you.
That's a cop out. God set up the rules, God set up the punishment.
No one chooses infinite punishment for errors made in finite time and with limited information.
YOUR God is not.
Hey, worship a mob boss if you like. That's not my idea of a God worthy of worship.
Yakuda
Verified User
The whining started earlier than I expected with you. It's not a cop out. He did set the rules and he did set the punishment. He also set it that you are free to make whatever choices you like. Therefore I he consequences of your choices are your responsibility not his.
You are mistaken. I'm an atheist, so there's no whine. I just find it fascinating that people create Gods that are so vituperative and vicious when what they say they want is a God who "so loved the world".
By this metric would it be "OK" if a parent told their child they would beat them if they ate a cookie and when the child ate a cookie the parent beat the child to oblivion and never stopped?
The parent TOLD the child the punishment.
Now, does that parent "love" the child?
Yakuda
Verified User
There are few people who whine more than atheists
Thats not quite the same is it? God's not beating you he's allowing you to experience the consequences of your choices. McDonald's isn't the cause of your obesity if you shove big macs in your pie hole.
That's interesting. I will admit when I deconverted it wasn't an easy time for me. It did involve realizing there was no one there for me. Unlike you I had to face the world as it is, not according to my fantasies of a big daddy protector.
Does that make me sad? Sometimes, but there really isn't any other option for me. Religion was corrosive to me, it was hurting me having unsubstantiated beliefs for no other reason than fear of punishment by a vengeful God and when I realized God never spoke to me or revealed himself to me despite my fervent prayers, I began to think maybe there was nothing there.
While it's not a spiritual path for everyone, it was for me.
It is EXACTLY the same. Eternal punishment for finite crimes committed by someone who doesn't have all the information the punisher does.
The fact that you perceive are there universal, objective standards of absolute good and absolute evil is used by theologians to say your conscience is guided by more than just Darwinian evolution and the electrochemical motions of electrons in your brain tissue. You are inadvertently making the case for theism.
Otherwise, as an atheist you would have to conclude right and wrong is a matter of opinion or social conversation, which are not framed by some objective standard independent of human opinion.
If you're ever in court on a misdemeanor or felony charge, feel free to explain to the judge you don't have free will and you are not responsible for choosing to commit the crime.
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
MAGA morons whine even more as proved on JPP daily.
In order to believe in "evil" one does not need to believe there is absolute good or evil.
Usually in these sorts of discussions the "evil" isn't limited solely to human malintent but rather the existence of any and all suffering, especially pointless suffering.
The reason it is more expansive than just "human evil" is that we are talking about God who is capable of direct control of every aspect of existence. So the question comes up: why would God create an animal like the JEWEL WASP? Why would God even allow one human to starve another to death without ever lifting a Godly finger to stop it?
The "Problem of Evil" only exists for God. God is a special case precisely because He truly has perfect free will and omnipotence. No things are impossible for God.
The reason why atheists like myself are interested in this topic is because it shows yet another logic failure for God. If God is not logical or rational then, IMHO, there is no reason to worship that being, let alone believe that being exists. The existence of God actually makes the horrors that life can sometimes throw at us incomprehensible, rather than more comprehensible.
Evil and sin are religious concepts, and come directly from the monotheistic religious traditions.
It's fine if an atheist wants to borrow the theological concepts of sin and evil, but that doesn't change the context in which those words evolved - as a reference to objectively and profoundly immoral actions.
A cultural relativist can say that human sacrifice, or female genital mutilation are wrong in their opinion. But those practices made perfectly good sense to Aztecs and certain African tribal cultures.
Because in order to prevent it he would have to control us in ways that would remove our free will.
Disagree. I can act evilly if I act in a way that is antithetical to what I value. If I value kindness and treat someone badly then I am acting "evilly".
If I want others to treat me well then it would be "evil" for me to treat them badly.
In this discussion it is not changing the context. It is the exact context of most of these discussions. It has ever been thus with the discussion of the P.O.E.
Sacrifice is part and parcel of almost all religions. Even Christianity is founded on one single act of human sacrifice which is critical to the faith.