To discourage them from engaging in such behavior again
To show to others that such behavior is wrong
To collect revenue from a person (IOW, to give you a right to personal gain as a result of the culprit’s actions)
To exact revenge on the person
If Christianity is correct and we’re going to either heaven or hell, then: #1 doesn’t apply, because once a person is in hell for eternity, it’s irrelevant if they commit such behavior again #2 doesn’t apply, because others won’t know for sure that such person is actually in hell #3 doesn’t apply, because if God can do anything, he can create money himself
So it leaves us with #4. God’s sole reason for allowing children to be raped is to exact revenge on them and/or their families.
What of you? Why do you allow people to suffer? I accuse you of being God and allowing all of this to go on. Why are you so unloving that you allow children to be raped in such a variety of ways? Dont bother claiming that you aren’t God - I shan’t believe you. Im on to your tricks and I demand a satisfactory answer. You dont have one, do you? You werent expecting this to go this route. You just wanted to lash out in pain without giving a shit and supplied the answer already - it is not an easy thing to fix and you are a prime example of why. Im not judging you, but I will draw your pain out so that you can face it and in that manner make the world a little better and in the process be the love I want to see in the world- the love that can set the future free of what we personally have suffered. Will you do whats hard and join me in that endeavor? Youre perfectly suited for it, having been through some of the worst of it.
If God can do anything, then he could deceive those in the temporal world by making them believe they will go to hell. That would be like the courts/government pretending that convicted felons are in prison when they actually aren’t.
Duality… What a joke. If this world was what it should be, nobody would be unappreciative. Seriously, do you think for one second that you would be able to imagine darkened thoughts from such a place? Fuck no. But its here now thus such a world is hard to imagine. Such a stupid argument- just an excuse for people to continue being pieces of shit. Do you really think that if we taught people correctly that they would still choose to be that way? Really? Then there is no hope and we should just give up and nuke the entire planet to free it from our sickness- but that manner of thinking is byproduct of our sickness. Nobody questions a working system- there is no need to. Weve yet to hit that mark but are fully aware of the possibility, thus our current state of discontent. You want miracles to happen but you dont want to put the work in to make your own. Sucks to be you.
Me brainwashed!? Lol an infinite variety of good wouldn’t include the class ‘not good’ and so would be limited and not infinite.
Ps. You would be happier if you accepted reality and didn’t keep trying find reason in an idiotic religion, then beating yourself up because the world you experience isn’t like that!
We have been attempting to do that for two thousand years or possibly back to the dawn of civilisation. Its just a way to make the free spirit of nature conform. …and yes people are still thinking dark thoughts, because they still have causality driving that - it’s called nature and we are natures children. It’s actually everything else which is false.
To make this ‘good’ race you would have to remove all the causal influences from nature and then we wouldn’t be human, we’d be some inane artificial life-form ~and one God didn’t create.
Btw i am not trying to justify doing bad things, as one can choose not to act upon bad thoughts. I am saying that ‘bad things’ are the extremity of the rich tapestry of life, and we need all of the aspects of that to be what human naturally is. If you removed all bad thoughts then humanity would loose its expansive diversity becoming banal and ridiculous entities not capable of creation.
I should add that if your God exists then he bit the apple first; duality is the engine of creation, no duality and and nothing can happen. Your God created THIS WORLD! Which means God is something different to any pretentious religious nonsense which tries to say God is all good. An all good god cannot create the natural world.
What youre saying is that we’re never going to be free of needing to have the worst possible extreme to drive forth the other. You are sitting there thinking nonsense and driving it forth. ‘we would not be what we are or what was intended.’ something banal. Indeed, but it was the plan and our immortal spirits carry the memory of it. God did have duality and tried at first to protect his creation from it. Now, we see 50 shades of influence causing people to be something theyd rather not. When our society rights itself it wont be needed as it is now because it is incorporated naturally into what we are. Man can not respect self or others in this society and you think that the natural order when we already deviated long ago to make this climb and we’re going to make it possible. God can create whatever the fuck he wants to and he said, have faith knowing that we wouldnt and planning around it. Good is the ultimate revolution and evolution and once we make it as an entire species we’ll be fine. Its coming soon.
Not once in human history has God tried to rule his creations after fashioning Heaven. He made us perfect from the fucking start and then he gave the devil dominion over the Earth and told him to try and rule us. Thats a lesson for the devil to learn and it shows Gods faith in us to give us his worst. Im saying that a lot of our thoughts and actions are manipulated in such a way now that will not be in the future for the triumphing over it. I sit at the epicenter and you see that I had an answer for even this argument against nature. As a druid, you know this and yet had to make the argument anyway because it was there. The future wont be easy nor banal. Not with Gods time-traveling, dimension-hopping spirit. How and when where why do you think we learn self control, balance and discipline? The paths weve been down that we dont have to go down ever again. And of course you didnt see an answer, you didnt even take time to process or think about it. You gave it what, 5 seconds. Damn youre patient.
Perfect? what as Neanderthals and other early humans? Why would he give the devil dominion?
We learn balance and self control due to the consequences of not achieving that.
Perhaps we could trim the edges of evil a bit and get rid of the worst extremes, but in my considerations on the matter we tend to remove the symptoms and not the causes. In that case we aren’t changing anything at base, and the evil will manifest itself in other ways.
Really? All that intelligence and you dont know what I mean? Is your paranoia and fear and insecurity and ego blocking your ability to think right now? We were given the ability to learn and grow- perfect. And no, I havent spent over a decade honing my mind through mental combat on the internet to get rid of people. People are not extremes, they are people and can be talked to and reasoned with. Not that you may see that in the moment or immediately after- but the long term shows the truth. Extremes are non-entities, concepts, not having life of their own. Yeah, youre just afraid. If evil manifests in different ways then we will be alert and aware for when it does and nip it in the bud, not let it take root. The upkeep is easy to maintain- the initial cleaning up is whatr hard because people always think they can rest content after winning a battle. I learned from fighting depression and I do not give up nor do I rest in my accomplishments for too long. See, you should be giving the arguments that I am. I Am.
I am happy working towards such a goal. You cant be very happy arguing against the goal of a brighter future and that really is the deciding factor. Its that simple and it will break you down. Im just getting started. Whats a few months, years, life times, eternities? And yet we sit at a very unique point whicg makes certain things possible. Welcome to my Kingdom come. Im almost homeless, suffered quite a bit in life, overcame insanity itself and fought for a better world through it all, but thats not even worth a couple bucks in our economy. I will put you to shame every step of the way and bruise that ego. Ill even call my shots ahead of time. I make every ounce of ‘evil’ serve a greater purpose and I am as satisfied with my life as I can be with the world the way it is. Could be better. Im just not impressed, man.
The problem of pain and evil – shall we just call it dolorology? – has been the subject of theological and philosophical enquiry for centuries. From the theistic point of view, arguing on the side of God so to speak, C.S. Lewis has written extensively on the problem in his book The Problem of Pain. A more balanced look at the problem can be seen in the dialogue on child abuse and the problem of reconciling evil with a just and good God between Ivan Karamazov and Alyosha. The ultimate question then becomes: Is there a difference between human fairness and justice and that of God? Alyosha speaks from the point of view of a good and gentle God, while Ivan ends up mounting an intellectual questioning of God: could God simply be a human creation, thereby allowing all that is possible and horrible to exist in the world that humans make?
Beyond the philosophical and theological implications, where there really is no viable solution except either faith or loss of faith, I sometimes wonder whether this question should just be left to the advancements of science, medicine, and psychology.
CS Lewis reconciles it by changing the definitions of words like evil and love. So he never really addresses the problem.
Given what Ivan says, it means God is not all-loving - thus creating a straw man.
It can be resolved with the most basic levels of logic.
[i]The argument
The logical problem of evil is usually stated:
Premise: Evil exists.
Premise: God is omnipotent: he is capable of doing something about evil.
Premise: God is omnibenevolent: he does not want evil to exist.
Premise: God is omniscient: he must know about all evil in the world.
From (2-4), a God with this attributes would prevent evil occurring
From (5), evil exists ergo God does not exist
However, this results in a contradiction because evil cannot both exist and not exist. Dropping any one of those four premises would resolve the contradiction, but dropping #1 would require us to fundamentally redefine evil in some way, and dropping the other three would undermine the Christian concept of God. Accepting all four premises would lead to irrational theism, which is belief that is contrary to evidence and reason.
The argument makes two implicit assumptions about God: [2]
An omnibenevolent God attempts to eliminate evil as far as it can.
An omnipotent God can eliminate evil.
These two assumptions are most often the target of counter arguments.
David Hume expressed the argument as:
“Why is there any misery at all in the world? Not by chance surely. From some cause then. Is it from the intention of the Deity? But he is perfectly benevolent. Is it contrary to his intention? But he is almighty. Nothing can shake the solidity of this reasoning, so short, so clear, so decisive; except we assert, that these subjects exceed all human capacity”[/i]
And my theory is that due to free will, God refuses to instantly clear it up- we brought it on ourselves when we thought ourselves greater than God. There are lessons to be learned from it and even God is not all-knowing and all powerful when it comes to love. There is no true evil- just so many people hurting in different ways that clouds and obstructs what love is there. Out of love and respect we are left to fix our own problems and to learn how to do so properly. He doesnt want to interfere because we remind him of various parts of himself. We suffer because one day we will be equal to God, for better or worse and he does not want us to be followers and worshippers. He suffers too through our stumbles- his were worse and he suffered through that, too. To be strong in love is true strength, power and happiness. We suffer now for how great our species will be in the future. He does not want us to suffer but he must allow it for true freedom and equality to be born.
Mutcer wrote: “Given what Ivan says, it means God is not all-loving - thus creating a straw man.”
It appears to me that he was questioning the existence of God in the usual religious sense, as an aspect of the kind of blind faith that Alyosha has. Ivan’s intellectualism did seem to leave him on the horns of a kind of existential dilemma, perhaps with God as a straw man created by humans on one side and atheism on the other. I don’t think he could ever completely reconcile himself to atheism.
Agree. It’s all about free will and love for one another. Example-- there is enough arable land on the globe for raising crops to feed the entire population; yet, the majority of people go hungry. The rule of rugged individualism is–I am not my brother’s keeper. Maybe we can evolve into empathy and compassion; but, as you note, we are in a sore transition.