EDIT: I should probably explain why I bother to debate this sort of thing. What BM says is right. But also, I grew up in a religious environment and still have regular contact with people living on the wrong side of fundamentalism. On the other side, I see atheists regularly making wild pronouncements about religion without fully understanding how it's practiced or what people believe. An argument that an atheist finds satisfying wouldn't even draw a scratch on a believer's faith. So I'm responding to Nepsotic to point out that the arguments that he thinks are iron clad really don't work when facing against faith and apologetics.
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"God works in mysterious ways!" is simply, a cop out.
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The most obvious problem with this answer is that it's a cop out. It exempts the concept of God from criticism and essentially renders him unfalsifiable.
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I don't think it's a cop out. It's not a satisfying answer, sure. But it's pretty much the only one that is possible. If you work from the starting point of god being a supreme being, it must follow that s/he can understand things we don't. There's no other way around it.
And, yes, it renders god unfalsifiable. That's true of just about any apologetic explanation. Or, outside of the world of religion, conspiracy theories work the same way. You're approaching a non-scientific topic with a scientific mindset. The point of discussing god isn't about falsifiability because that's simply impossible. It's about... well, it's about a lot of things. But disproving god is not one of them.
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Not natural disasters, though if there was a god, they would be under his control and therefore you could call it evil, because it is willed. Nature however, isn't evil.
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Lots of people point to natural disasters as proof that god doesn't exist or that if he does exist, he's evil himself. I was trying to explain that that's a juvenile view of god. They equate being good with being nice and thus with living a fluffy, comfortable life with no pain or death. If you actually read the bible, god is not nice at all. Look at the Noah story; god clearly is prepared to kill millions of people if he chooses to. And this goes back to what I was saying before: God is above human views of good and evil happenings. By definition, everything he does is
right.
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What is evil? Most Christians say that evil is simply the absence of good. Darkness in the absence of light. God didn't create evil, but he created beings called humans who could choose not to be good, and THAT is why there is evil in the world
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Yes.
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This doesn't really add up. If God made man capable of turning away from good, he was still creating evil, or if you believe in the literal creation story, he created man with enough of a rebellious side to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and fall from grace. Either way, our biology is at fault for evil, and God is at fault for our biology.
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Not sure what your point is here. Sure, god created everything. Including evil. He created a world and chose not to make it perfect and mixed in a whole pile of shitty stuff to keep things interesting. Why? I don't know. But
if you believe in god, then you can't deny that's the case. And
if you believe in god, you've got to believe that he had a reason for it. I'm yet to hear a reason that I think is satisfying, but plenty of religious people are reassured just knowing that god had a reason even if they don't know it.
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Let's put that aside and say that for some reason God can't know our morality without conducting this test. Now think about this, life being a test is the equivelant of giving a bunch of primary school kids tests, except some have 15 minutes in which to complete it, and some have 2 weeks. Some have easy questions like 2+2 and some have difficult ones like 'explain in detail why barium forms an ion with the charge of 2+'. Would anybody take the results of such a test seriously? Of course not, because in order for a test to be a measure of anything it needs to be fair, that means it needs to be the same for everyone who takes it. The theory that life is a test doesn't hold up to scrutiny because, life isn't fair.
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Not really. You don't pass the test when you acheive the same thing as the other guy. Someone who started life in a shitty situation passes the test when they become an incrementally better person. Someone who was born into privelege would have to put in a similar amount of
effort, not a similar level of incremental improvement. The second person would have to reach much further to achieve the same goal.
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Further, if God is testing us then the way you pass the test is absurd. You pass the test of life when you give up all reason and logic and accept the divinity of the Christian God. The only personality trait demonstrated here is willful ignorance- this is what God rewards?
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That's why I prefer the Jewish god, who rewards action rather than faith.
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Another explanation for the existence of evil in a world supposedly created by an omnipotent loving God is that there exists another entity. An entity that exists in the universe solely dedicated to sowing seeds of evil. This force is most commonly referred to as ZEE DEVIL. Satan is the lord of Hell and he works against God for the souls of all mankind. God wants tou to go to heaven and does all he can to see to it that you make the right choices and get saved.
ZE DEVIL, on the other hand wants to trick you into being naughty and going to hell to burn for all time in an agonizing pit of flames. He puts temptations and sin in your path.
The problems with this are multitudinous.
First off, if God is all-powerful then he should be able to just destroy the Devil instantly if he so desired. Failing that, why doesn't God just manifest on Earth to prove that he exists and tell us outright how to avoid damnation. God allowing the Devil to exist makes no sense. A God who created the Devil in the first place is still the author of evil.
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As I said in my previous post, the idea that god is incapable of stomping on the devil is laughable. So either the devil doesn't exist or god wants him to exist. In Judaism there's no concept of the devil. There's a man's evil inclination, which is generally regarded as being simply a failing of human nature but sometimes is anthropomorphised as an actual angel whose job it is to tempt you. Similarly, Satan isn't a devil but an angel whose job it is to keep track of everybody's sins and be the prosecutor when you die and are judged. 'Satan' literally means 'accuser'. The thing is though, he doesn't actually want you to be judged negatively. He's hoping you were a good person in your life and get rewarded. He's just an angel with a shitty job to do.
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As for what God is, it seems not one person can agree on it. Another thing to ask is why is God's supposedly infinite knowledge limited by the knowledge of humans from the time period said God's respective holy book was written, for example, the earth being flat?
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Well, I can't recall the bible ever saying that the world was flat. It did refer to the corners of the Earth, but that can be regarded as metaphor. But aside from that specific example, it's a fair point.
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If God is the ultimate be-all end-all when it comes to morality, does that mean misogyny, homophobia, slavery and paedophilia are all completely just?
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Prrrrretty much, yes. In certain contexts. But only because you used the word 'just' rather than 'good'.
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I'd like to reiterate that the riddle of Epicurus is rated 1 out of 5 stars on thinkexist.com. A quote that single-handedly refutes the entire moral law argument for the existence of God is rated one star. A quote regarding questions of theology and morality from one of the most important intellectuals in human history is rated one star yet, Epicurus was a brilliant thinker.
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Except it doesn't refute the entire moral law argument. Any capable apologist would be able to explain it away in a minute and a half. In most cases by simply defining evil the way they like, which is what I did in my post.
Also, why are you so confused that it's rated only 1 star? Are you surprised that people rate things that challenge their long-held beliefs lowly?
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Forgive the lack of paragraphs and structure in this post, I'm writing on a phone and it's a pain in the balls.
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You tapped all that out on a phone? Holy shit!