It's pretty easy to argue that some gods can't possibly exist as written, such as the Christian God, because they're not even internally consistent. It would require the suspension of logic as well as the multitude of unfounded assumptions that have to be made.

(November 24, 2015 at 1:10 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Actually, the "problem of evil" has never for one second made me question God because I believe in free will.

You should probably think more about how the idea of free will interacts with the idea of an omnipotent god. Do you have the power to decide against god's plan for you? If yes, then your god is not omnipotent. If no, then you don't have free will.

Sorry, but if you don't think the existence of evil is a mark against a perfectly good all-powerful god, then you haven't really given it much thought, in my own view.

Ah, I've been through the free will argument so many times. It always ends with the other person giving up and not replying anymore, then resetting and using the exact same argument another time as if it never happened. Maybe I should write it all up on my website.

The thing is, if you simply define everything God does to be good, then that "clears up" the problem of evil. What we would call evil is actually good, because it originated from God. It just leaves the problem that the word "good" becomes a meaningless placeholder.

(November 24, 2015 at 7:17 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: I don't think tsunamis are evil. I don't think death, in and of itself is evil. I believe evil acts committed by conscious people, are evil. And that is entirely our own free will.

Let's try out cancer, then. It's not a nice, clean death. You waste away, in pain, sores suppurating on your skin, literally shitting yourself at the end of it and actually wishing to be dead.

Who chooses cancer?

Who invented cancer? Was he conscious?

The real problem of evil is not asking how evil can exist if your god is good. The real problem of evil is how anyone who invented leukemia or Alzheimer's can be regarded as "good".

You believe that evil acts committed by conscious people are evil.

If your god inflicted my son's mother with breast cancer -- something she certainly didn't choose from her own free will -- how can you say that that act is good?

To forestall an ugly conversation, please don't appeal to "he was using the disease to teach her something". Firstly, she learnt very little from it; and secondly, shouldn't an omnipotent god be better able to find a way to teach someone something than to, you know, give them a fucking fatal disease?

Your god invented cancer. The Problem of Evil is not that it exists in the world -- that's very explainable -- the Problem of Evil is that it exists in the god you Christians claim is the Perfectly Good Creator.

A Perfect Carpenter doesn't build a crooked cabinet.

(November 25, 2015 at 1:48 am)c172 Wrote: I just see no way that god could exist. I'd be devastated to be proven wrong. I think godbelief trivializes what science proves to us to be true.

There is no scientific discovery that disproves God, in my eyes. And I believe in science. I don't see any conflict between science and my faith.

Cancer is either entirely found in nature, or it came about through the free will of people themselves - polluting the air, adding chemicals to our foods, not taking care of our planet, etc.

Either way, I don't see it as God working like a wizard with a magic wand, inflicting people with it for some kind of purpose. I see it as Him allowing the natural course of things to happen, just as He did so when we evolved. And I explained in my other post why I do not believe this makes him an evil being.

(November 25, 2015 at 1:48 am)c172 Wrote: I just see no way that god could exist. I'd be devastated to be proven wrong. I think godbelief trivializes what science proves to us to be true.

May I ask why you would be devastated?  You do not have to answer, I'm honestly just curious.

There'd better not be a god, for its own sake. Where do I stand? On its fucking throat.

(November 25, 2015 at 10:43 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote:

(November 25, 2015 at 1:48 am)c172 Wrote: I just see no way that god could exist. I'd be devastated to be proven wrong. I think godbelief trivializes what science proves to us to be true.

There is no scientific discovery that disproves God, in my eyes. And I believe in science. I don't see any conflict between science and my faith.

Likewise, there's no scientific discovery that proves a god, either, so using that statement to help justify a theistic position is an argument from ignorance.

In my mind it is fundamentally problematic that so many things that have been claimed to be the will of a god or the hand of a god acting in this world have been shown to have natural causes.  And appealing to a god who works through nature is problematic as well because then you have (1) a god who decides that of all the possible universes it could have created, the one in which people die by being buried alive in landslides and in misery as they waste away from cancer and disease is the one to choose, and (2) you end up with a god who is indistinguishable from nature which leads to the question of "how do you even know this god exists in the first place?"  Occam's razor would cut that god right out of the picture; there's no need to invoke a god when you can appeal to nature itself.

Which ultimately comes back to the problem of the omnis that Simon Moon was talking about back in post 47 (before I sidetracked things... ):

(November 24, 2015 at 3:22 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: Inserting the word "natural", where does your god fit in the following by Epicurus:

Is God willing to prevent natural evil, but not able? 
Then he is not omnipotent. 
Is he able, but not willing? 
Then he is malevolent. 
Is he both able and willing? 
Then whence cometh natural  evil? 
Is he neither able nor willing? 
Then why call him God?

So, Cathy, do you believe that god is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent?

I don't think god belief is any where near as big an impediment to science as certainty is. It is motivated, willful assumptions based on our personal preferences which impede discovery. Of course god belief itself seems pretty motivated and willful, but for some at least it doesn't seem to get in the way of doing good science. Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Erwin Schrodinger and Werner Heisenberg seem to have done okay and were allegedly religious. But I do wonder just how these guys held their religious beliefs.