the problem of evil

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
21

cba

Um, if God can make 1+1= Whatever He wants, then who cares if something about Him implies a contradiction? If He has that kind of Omnipotence, then contradiction is to be expected, and does not refute His existence.

But, if you insist on a God that is beholden to logic (as I do, and as you must in order for a contradiction to be damaging to His existence), then burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that there is no possible explanation for a good Being permitting evil. Refuting any particular explanation isn’t enough- you must show that no explanation can ever be possible.
Again, you can say it’s unlikely that God and evil exist, you can say that it’s irrational for God and evil to exist, but for you to say it’s contradictory, you need to do a lot more work than you have (and incidentally achieve something no atheist has achieved, I believe).

22

Evil is about intent, not content. You can be wrong or make a mistake without committing Evil, Evil resides in the Heart, or Soul so to speak. It is simply serving yourself without regard to what harm it causes to others.

23

i didnt say it disproves god exists. i said its the reason i stopped being a christian and started being an atheist. i said it proves exactly what you say it proves. that god either isnt omni everything or that he is evil to some extent.

24

god makes mistakes? why does an omnipotent being make mistakes? that doesnt make any sense at all.

25

metaphysics are analytical problems. you cant find any empirical evidence for any of them thats what defines it as metaphysical.

meaningless does not follow atheism for the millionth time. if anything the prospect of an afterlife deminishes the worth of this life making this life meaningless more than an atheistic perspective ever will. unless youre insane. which im debating in ethics right now coincidentally.

but i see what youre saying. its a preference in the sense that you can choose to live one life full of problems over another life full of problems? thats what you mean right? i dont understand why you would be a christian then. why not make up your own religion or pick one with less holes? and that is what people are doing. christianity in any pure sense is on the decline and christianity in the sense that you basically make up your own beliefs is more the norm. so ive noticed anyway.

26

we care… we are logical beings. think… if a computer figured out a mathmatically more efficient way of doing something and attempted to perform that action and we stopped it and made it perform the less logical thing wed be acting like god does to human beings. the computer on the other hand would be confused and continue to perform the same operation with no success. the computer would be like… wtf are you doing. and we for whatever reason we arent moral beings so we dont need a morally good reason to do something… we are not acting logically. thus its entirely possible for my scenerio to be performed if and only if god wasnt controlled by some sort of ethics or power deficiency.

im not trying to prove he doesnt exist for the millionth and one time.

but fine we will work under your definition of a logical god. god can logically create a world where there is no real sense of pain or suffering. a world where you can learn from mistakes and a world where you can make choices. hell… i could do that. nintendo has done it for a good 20 years. are they more intelligent than god? he doesnt have to break any logical rules by shorting out the severity of pain. we dont need a holocaust to provide us with answers assuming we even learned anything from the damn thing… its a contradiction. im not saying you have to believe it im just asking why wont you admit to it? its a logical impossibility that hundreds of millions of people really dont like to believe exists. i know you can make excuses that doesnt surprise me. anyone can do that. maybe youve created an elaborate one then good job. but its still a contradiction. im just wondering why you would want to bother defending it in the first place. if its broke fix it. its sad watching christians push the carcass of their religion around.

27

cba:

— metaphysics are analytical problems. you cant find any empirical evidence for any of them thats what defines it as metaphysical.
O- Agreed. And that is why the Problem of Evil can shed no light or obscurity upon the proposed existence of God. The existence of God, or a unicorn for that matter are believed to be empirically verifiable- that is what people believe. They believe in God as Spirit which exists outside of ourselves just like the wind and the sky. God is not taken to be a literary character or a mental idea of our own opinions on perfection. I only need to bring up the idea of Thomas. What is more empirical than thrusting your finger through the holes of someone you saw die? Or Moses: what can be more physical than stones writen upon by God? Sure you can doubt these, just as you can doubt any empirical occurence. In the end, even empirircism is a form of metaphysics.

— meaningless does not follow atheism for the millionth time.
O- I said that it can.

— if anything the prospect of an afterlife deminishes the worth of this life making this life meaningless more than an atheistic perspective ever will.
O- Not at all. Both the atheist and the theist live for a future not yet. Man is what he chooses to be; the communist state will be a classless state. Ignorance of our unconscious is the source of guilt. Bring what lies dormant into the awerness of the superego and life is honky-dory.

— but i see what youre saying. its a preference in the sense that you can choose to live one life full of problems over another life full of problems?
O- I don’t understand what you just said-- But allow me to rap again:
Belief in God is for the most part a means to an end. the more rationalized the means- God- becomes, the more contradictions emerge. It is the same for most all else. To say anything at all we must make general what is particular and thus, if you seek precision, you find many contradictions.

— i dont understand why you would be a christian then. why not make up your own religion or pick one with less holes? and that is what people are doing.
O- Some people with too much time on their hands to think this through, find the obstacles and the overcome them in a different version of his former faith. This is definetly a minority.

28

i think im up 5 times now. where ive said im not trying to disprove gods existence. im simply trying to point out the lack of logic behind following the christian faith. thats it.

i dont care about your “empirical” evidence for god. i just simply dont want to talk about that. you can believe that the turd on the ground outside is gods if you want. thats totally fine. i dont care.

meaningless can follow anything.

superego is a load of crap. freud is shit. weve moved beyond freud in psychology… way way way beyond.

29

cba:

Up to that last post I had the idea that you actually belonged here. That is, that you had the minimun intelligenge to keep up with an argument and understand what you read.
I now question my initial assessment.

30

Many people experience the world as an irrational place so having an irrational religion deifying an irrational god is all of a piece. After all, if god was rational, what could explain their irrational world?

Anyway, if god created evil is it really all that bad?
Is it not just the other side of the same coin?
The perfect universe reflecting the perfect god?
Would not a person by denying their evil nature be turning their back on god?

This is basically the argument that precipitated the first Crusade so it is tried and true.

31

is watching your child be ripped apart by dogs that bad? probably not. though i dont have kids so i could be wrong.

maybe id be funnier if i said that 9/11 wasnt that bad. our war on terror should be finding islamic radicals and give them all high fives.

granted… thats not your point. but still tried and true on the moron class of medieval europe which encompassed probably all of the people living at that time. not exactly where id perfect a religious ideology.

32

clearly… im such a fool to believe that there is no such thing as empirical evidence for metaphysical b.s. as well as for believing that freud has any important opinions to modern day psychology. i dont know… maybe you have an obsession with feces and genitals but i certainly dont need them to decide where guilt originates from. i suppose it doesnt matter though. i stopped caring about the discussion last post when i had to explain what i was asking for the 5th time.

33

I agree 100% with Uccisore. There’s no formulation of the logical Problem of Evil that the theist cannot get around, or at least, there ain’t one that I’m familiar with.

If we’re talking the evidential problem. Well - it sure stops a lot of people believing, I can’t deny that. It also makes a lot of people lose their faith. But it doesn’t have to. The evidential problem of evil does not threaten my faith, and that doesn’t make me irrational or anything.

34

Hello cba:

— clearly… im such a fool to believe that there is no such thing as empirical evidence for metaphysical b.s. as well as for believing that freud has any important opinions to modern day psychology. i dont know…
O- After my reply to your post one of the moderators PM me to tell me to chill out on my comments, or I’ll make myself a worthy candidate of the Hall of Shame. Let me quote some passages of my reply to him, as they answer one or more of your misunderstandings:

He [that is you cba] quotes my post (you might take that to mean that he has read my post and is making sure that I know what words he is reacting to)

omar wrote:
cba:

— metaphysics are analytical problems. you cant find any empirical evidence for any of them thats what defines it as metaphysical.
O- Agreed. And that is why the Problem of Evil can shed no light or obscurity upon the proposed existence of God. The existence of God, or a unicorn for that matter are believed to be empirically verifiable- that is what people believe. They believe in God as Spirit which exists outside of ourselves just like the wind and the sky. God is not taken to be a literary character or a mental idea of our own opinions on perfection. I only need to bring up the idea of Thomas. What is more empirical than thrusting your finger through the holes of someone you saw die? Or Moses: what can be more physical than stones writen upon by God? Sure you can doubt these, just as you can doubt any empirical occurence. In the end, even empirircism is a form of metaphysics.

You said:
— meaningless does not follow atheism for the millionth time.
O- I said that it can.

— if anything the prospect of an afterlife deminishes the worth of this life making this life meaningless more than an atheistic perspective ever will.
O- Not at all. Both the atheist and the theist live for a future not yet. Man is what he chooses to be; the communist state will be a classless state. Ignorance of our unconscious is the source of guilt. Bring what lies dormant into the awerness of the superego and life is honky-dory.
[These, cba, are what the atheist humanist tells us, not what I tell you. I am simply trying to give examples as to how the atheist places his faith in the future. It is not a defense of Sartre, Marx or Freud.]

[Now your comments to the above were:]

i think im up 5 times now. where ive said im not trying to disprove gods existence. im simply trying to point out the lack of logic behind following the christian faith. thats it.
{ Through the post, my position is that I agree with you, but just because you leave religion, christianity and become and atheist, does not make you all of the sudden super-logical rational man. At the foundation of every logical and rational system stands a forgotten metaphysics, a forgotten irrationality.}

i dont care about your “empirical” evidence for god.
{ I did not provide or tried to provide a single empirical proof}

i just simply dont want to talk about that. you can believe that the turd on the ground outside is gods if you want. thats totally fine. i dont care.
{ Now, you might not react to such a statement, my friend, but to me that is taking off your gloves and striking me on the cheek with them. It does not matter to me that he is wrong, but had I said the things he thought I said, such an aswer would piss me off. Being that that is not what I said, it annoys me still because he took a pretty good post, inflated it with his own grievances with others and then proceeded to relieve himself on it.}

meaningless can follow anything.

superego is a load of crap. freud is shit. weve moved beyond freud in psychology… way way way beyond.
{Who, I ask who is arguing that Freud is right!!! My point was that he is wrong…no, that he was as irrational as the religious- that both the believer and the Freudian proceed from an idea that is, if not irrational, then beyond demonstration}

So I said:
cba:

Up to that last post I had the idea that you actually belonged here.
{Sounds rough, but I qualify my statement by saying exactly how it is meant}

That is, that you had the minimun intelligenge to keep up with an argument and understand what you read.
{You read my post and basically made me into:
1- A person that is looking to provide proofs for God.
2- A person so ignorant as to believe in the turd on the ground outside is god.
3- A Freudian
If you had read the post, a basic courtesy, you would not have taken me to be an apologist but a cynic, at worst. he might have been a little annoyed that I was saying that God existence is not disproved by the Problem of Evil, but the point is that the consequences of irrationality as he himself has declared is a loss of faith in God as taken by the christians. God is a means to an end and that is why it has nothing to do with logical contradictions at all. because he does not read my post he does not see this most basic of points which would have answered his questions as to why people believe what is illogical as an omnipotent and omnibeneficient deity}
I now question my initial assessment.
{ Now I question. That is it. He might change my mind in the future, but doubt has been brought up in me about just how intelligent this cat is. This is an opinion that is not insulting and I have received worse from the likes of Jakob and Weary Locomotive. It is certainly not an ad homenin. Hall of Shame material, in my opinion, is his opinion that if I want to believe that the turd outside is god etc, etc, now, that is uncalled for, even if in the end has nothing to do with me. Just the fact that it entered his head is offensive enough because his intention was not to argue but to attack. My comment, by expressing doubt, is more open to argument and does not end in a “that is totally fine. I don’t care”, which is not but a closure of the debate. It is dismisive and arrogant.

But what I said above is not mere opinion. Listen to what you now write, and I pray, that the moderator who PM me can see how you show your true vulgarity:

— maybe you have an obsession with feces and genitals but i certainly dont need them to decide where guilt originates from.

O- I am not a Freudian, but is that all you care to remember from Freud? But worst of all is your opinion, that as a Freudian, if I really was, that I must have an obssession with feces and genitals.

35

wait a minute. you are willing to admit that god might exist, and you are an “atheist”? i thought atheist meant that you believed god doesnt exist, and that what you are describing is agnostic?

im not a “christian” either in that i refuse to perform rituals and chants with the rest of the cult, but that doesnt make me an atheist at all. those things are the reason why im not a christian. understanding that there is something strange about evil existing and that there is some reason for it existing that we cant understand is a fundamental part of christianity. realizing that evil doesnt make sense does not make you un-christian at all, all christians either havent put much thought into it or totally agree with what i said and what you say you agreee with.

i thought you were saying that the problem of evil caused you to not believe in god. if youre saying it causes you to not be christian, that doesnt seem to make sense, since christians will agree with you and remain christian.

what is it that christians do believe and that you dont believe?

36

i dont believe in god i just hate disturbing the hornets because being preached at is really fucking annoying. so i tip toe around atheism because to theists it ruins my credibility.

37

so you dont know anything that disproves god, you just choose not to believe in him? why not? any information causing your belief? or just irrational emotion?

i dont really understand what youre saying. you do or dont want your credibility to be destroyed? what do christians believe that you dont believe?

38

i dont understand theological concepts put in theological terms. i just dont see the point. i refuse to even discuss the prospects of metaphysics because its a total waste of time.

your approach i suppose is the problem. i need a psychological perspective to understand why people refuse to accept logical contradiction.

but for the record i didnt think you were a theist. i just dont understand the purpose of bringing up those points.

39

Hello cba:

— i dont understand theological concepts put in theological terms.
O- Then you’re missing what is most important to understand.

— i just dont see the point.
O- Are you even trying?

— i refuse to even discuss the prospects of metaphysics because its a total waste of time.
O- That starting position cripples your understanding, and worse, it keeps you blind as to thge metaphysics that lay all around you. Metaphysics is just a necessity for the living. Instead of spending all your time and energy in the devaluation of the irrational and the illogical, you could take a more sympathetic view which might reveal how life is conducted with the upmost irrationality, underneath all rationality. The goal of the day is seized by him who committed the fallacies which logicians warn about.

— your approach i suppose is the problem. i need a psychological perspective to understand why people refuse to accept logical contradiction.
O- I said it before and I say it again. God is a means to an end. God is a contradiction in itself, but that is the point in believing in just such a thing. People who believe do not believe in God because it is logical to do so. I am not being clear…
God is a means to an end. That end is the believer’s self preservation. That end overrides any need for logic in the means towards that end. If you consider the idea of God, leaving out any attributes that might contradict his possibility or affirm it in light of what reality exhibits, you’ll find that there is no logical necessity to arrive at “God” or an “Inmovable Mover”.
Ever read Milton’s “Paradise Lost”? The Devil calls himself a son of heaven, not because he is no son of God but because he hypothesises that heaven predates God. He is quite logical. Any firm terminal reveals yet another terminal which contains it. The appointment of one idea as final, God, Inmovable mover etc, etc displays the irrational need to circle the excess of reality within margins of our reason, that we may speak of it, that we may control it, use it and consume it. That circle, that refusal to inquire any further, is illogical and irrational.
Now, you may say that this is only true of the theist, but it is true of the species, not of a particular biography within the species. Following Hume, and his logic, or even Russell and any anti-metaphysician, we find that there is no reason or logic to many of our most dearly held certainties. I said certainties because our actions reveal them as that and not as mere assumptions with which we could simply part with if needed. Take for example the Self, which, if you follow logic, does not really exist. It is a habit, it is an economy of language-- that it may be for the logician, but how does he know without metaphysics? How do you go from the particular to the general without the crime of metaphysics? It does not even need to be in your science, but in the assumption that you, the observer exist continuously enough to study that which you doubt to begin with- hence the contradiction in the empiricism himself ( I refer to Bertrand for this insight though I believe that it undercut his own philosophic stand a bit).
To conduct a life, to study and philosophize, you need a moderate amount of metaphysics. Thus, to those who wish to be rid of them, beware: Be a philosopher, but first of all be a man.

— but for the record i didnt think you were a theist. i just dont understand the purpose of bringing up those points.
O- I bring up these points because I feel for those people. They are put out as if they and only they do such things. They are told “it is illogical”, “it is irrational”, “how can you believe such inconsistent god”. As if it is only them who are prone and guilty of inconsistencies and irrationalities. It is human, that is all.
I understand that evil, suffering in the world is an obstacle to an idea that God is all good or all powerful, but the idea of God was made (or developed under other conditions) all-good and all-powerful to meet another end, at another time. The idea of God did not come to fruition in a world of suffering. You would not think of a King as good natured if all you ever saw was suffering. Reality is that the King’s rule might have benefits and hardships that change our opinion as to what his nature is. It does not rain everyday. We, in any case, suffer dearly, not so much because the rain itself, which, if it was continuous, we would get accoustumed to, but in the memory of the sunny day.
Same with POE. It is an obstacle because of the happiness we felt in another day.
You might still wonder why would one believe in such an ineffective Being. We would have to study the origins of faith in general, but as a brief outline, let me offer two cases, which would make my post truly titanic, but cannot be helped.
Parable:
There was one a tribe of great warriors who decimated the entire region. No army could stand in their way and they enslaved all the peoples of the land except one who lived near the highest peaks. These highlanders had no army and no fortressess along the ridge. But every now and then they came down to visit the sick of the powerful clan. With their chants and potions they attended to the sick. Some, a great majority, died irremedialy, but others, though small in size got better for reasons that often had nothing to do with the “doctors” but on other times in their potions which, if only by luck sometimes contained the cures and other times, the people were healed by themselves, just as one is cured by a placebo.
Though many more died than returned to health, the powerful clan remembered solely, or better, those times their “magick” worked. Some wondered. Some speculated that they could probably find the same results if they applied the same means- by immitations. But they were rebuffed by the “doctors”, who said that their magick was not in the herbs nor in their powerful chants but in spirits that empowered their potions and received their chants.

Why do we believe such irrational crap? Because we live if we do.

(Note: I will skip on giving the other example. This post is long enough already)

40

the things that have no effect on life are important? dont answer that. i disagree. you wont convince me otherwise.

not hard.

im aware that the state and structure of things is irrational. that doesnt mean we are irrational or that we are justified to act irrationally. we are biological computers. our logic is how we make meaning. we are physically incapable of defying that. again. i disagree. its not going to change.

ironically i find the human thing to do to be the total opposite and also root it in survival.

so in that sense hope is the value of irrationality?

i understand that. i dont think that justifies religion or contradictions. i can understand how a world without irrationality could look bleak and give people a lack of hope but i dont think it would. a rational person would recognize the value of it and use it.

also when faced with contradictions rational people change their beliefs. though again as you said there is faith. why its placed in the irrational instead of a God though as youre saying is pointless.