This is cringeworthy:
No argument required.
This is also embarrassing:
God knows but you don’t. Although you act as though you know everything.
The rapist is evil for doing it but I don’t think that God is necessarily evil for allowing it. Maybe such behavior has to be allowed to achieve a greater good. I can see that by preventing all suffering, God would prevent all life from existing. To live is to suffer in some sense. Seems unavoidable.
People believe in equality and that it should extend to all realms. And people believe in a lot of horrifying things that they fear. The world is a mess of conflicting beliefs but the strongest will win out. People believe in equality between all things but some beliefs just arent strong enough. And you know why? Because they refuse to incorporate love and emotion to the equation. The truth rocks people more than weak possibilities and lies. People believe that greed will always exist, but more believe in a good god that can solve anything given enough time.
They know if they read the New Testament. Right?
Not necessarily true. If one posits a god which is logically impossible, then such a god can easily be proven to not exist.
If God can do anything, then he can accomplish the greatest possible good either with evil or without evil. And if the more evil something is, the less good it is, then the greatest possible good would contain a lesser amount of evil.
If God can do anything, loves everyone and knows everything, then premise #3 is true.
And if evil is bad, then the greatest possible good would include the least amount of evil possible. Since the god we’re talking about can do anything, it could accomplish the greatest possible good either with babies dying of cancer or no babies dying of cancer. Since it can do this either with or without such atrocities, why choose the route with atrocities when the route without atrocities is available? But in order to maintain one’s omnibenevolence, the god would have to choose the route without the atrocities.
Excuse me, Phyllo, but obviously you have no idea what happened in the history of the so-called “communistic” countries, especially in the Soviet Union, in China, and in Cambodia.
If anybody had a cow, then this one was called a “bourgeois” and then killed. This happened, for example, in Ukraine (at that time a part of the Soviet empire) many times, because the Ukranians were not as poor as the other Soviet subjects yet (in other words: they were not “equalised” yet). And if anybody was suspected (merely suspected!) to be religious or theistic (and the dictator dictated the meaning and interpretation of these words), then this one was also punished and then killed.
Those who do not know or have forgotten what happened in the so-called “communistic” dictatorships do not change anything of the historical facts. It is this ignorance that opens the floodgates to the demands of all dictatorships.
“If”…which you nor no one else has done.
Can god do evil? If by your definition that god can do absolutely everything and anything he can. Therefore by your definition there is no contradiction between god doing evil because he can do everything by definition…your definition. Therefore the POE argument is self defeating because of your definition.
Your definition of god is irrelevant as I pointed out in another thread otherwise you are just presenting a straw man argument. Your definitions of the power of god and what it means to be a benevolent god are faulty.
Once again false because of your definition of god is a straw man. Premise 3 is false based on the Christian definition of god.
Your definition of god is your own, not the Christian definition therefore your argument is a straw man. I pointed out in the other thread what was wrong with your definitions of god in regards to the nature of god.
I’m asking you to respond to MY definitions which incidentally ARE the standard Christian definitions of god. What Christian source are you using for your definitions?
You do realize this statement is in conflict with your logical argument? The POE states that all evil must be eliminated not the least amount.
Again, can god do evil? Can god make 2+2= 13 and still be good? Think carefully what god would have to do to make 2+2=13. Your definitions of gods power and what it means to be benevolent are not in agreement with Christian definitions and are therefore a straw man.
I was born in a communist country and lived there for several years. My parents lived under communism for 20 years and my grandmothers and uncle for 40 years.
But yeah, it could be that I know nothing about it. 
BTW, I was baptized and I survived… as did my parents, grandparents and the priest who performed the ceremony.
Which “communistic” country was it where you was born, Phyllo? Did you, your parents, or your grandparents live during the dictatorship of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot or during the dictatorship of other “communistic” dictators? If one was conformed (not striking, not conspicuous), then this one could have luck, because whether one was punished or not depended on the the other people around this one as well, on the situation, on the fact whether they wanted this one to be punished, … and so on, thus not only but mainly on the dictators and their functionaries.
How I know this? Not by experience but by science: I have studied history - among other academic disciplines - at the university.
GOD’S REASON FOR ALLOWING PAIN AND SUFFERING…
The only real reason being - simply Cause and Effect, human evolution and because WE ourselves allow it - either out of laziness, self-hate, unconsciousness or the realization that it is necessary in order to grow. We allow it in others for the same reasons
The reason for the thread is that we ultimately always attempt to answer and to resolve the difficult questions which there are no answers for. We have to have the answers and so we blame something or give it over to something which we figure is higher than self.
So humans allow things like destructive earthquakes to hit Haiti and massive Tsunamis to wipe out coastal communities in Japan. We don’t allow those things. But if an all-powerful & all-knowing god allows such things, then he certainly isn’t omnibenevolent.
There’s a simple explanation:
Either a god which is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving doesn’t exist or the catastrophes we hear about don’t actually occur. Which do you think is more likely:?
Please answer my question first and then I’ll read & address the rest of your post. Avoiding questions is the most frequent Christian defense against the problem of evil - and it does nothing to reconcile the problem.
Let’s say you have the power to stop a child from getting raped without any harm to you. Would you allow the child to get raped or would you stop the rapist from raping the child?
Czechoslovakia.
Being a theist didn’t get you killed. It counted as a black mark on your record. If you wanted to get something like a new apartment, telephone, job promotion, then you were placed lower on the waiting list. If you accumulated enough black marks, then you might come to the attention of the authorities.
History is not science, science is not history.
Well, if the rape occurs and God is omnipotent and omniscient, then by allowing it, he must not be omnibenevolent. Therefore, an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent god doesn’t exist.
This is a fairly complex question. The obvious answer is - yes, of course, always. But let’s look at a couple of different scenarios:
1: You catch a rapist in the act of ripping the clothes off a child, with the obvious intention of doing the deed.
Sure, you stop him.
2. You notice through scientific research that certain people have a chemical ‘imbalance’ which gives them a tendency to rape significantly more often than those without the imbalance.
Should we drug those people so that they do not try to rape in the future?
Should we alter the genes of these people? Should we imprison them or kill them so that they cannot offend? Should they be on a ‘potential rapist list’?
I/we could do all those things without personal harm to myself. But I would not do it because I do not believe that it would produce a better world. IOW, a world where rape is possible is a better world than a world where an overlord/god/government has such enormous control over a person’s life.
If life and suffering go together, if duality is a logical consequence of existence… then the fact that people suffer is not a limitation on potency or benevolence. God does not need create the impossible just to satisfy some abstract definition of omnipotence.
Phyllo… this is a sickness you’re spouting. That’s why they call it apologetics. God could have easily created all other sufferings without creating rape (at a minimum).
Then we be having this same discussion about another suffering AND we would also have an artificial limit on rape imposed by God.
Here is an idea : what if God allows you to think and do anything.
The CSSR became communistic in 1945.
In the countries I mentioned it did: Soviet Union, China, Cambodia. In Cambodia it was not even allowed to wear glasses because that was interpretated as “being intellectual”, and being intellectual was punished by death. Have you never heard of the killing fields?
History is science, a science discipline. Of course. And science is also history, because science has its own history. Of course. Studying science history was one of my favorites.
Here’s an idea: What if God gave you a good heart?