So I take that still no scholarly findings here as to why god is a megalomaniac asshole?

I had a feeling that we’d have to chalk this one up to “he works in a mysterious way” too.

What do you mean you don't understand what I'm getting at?

If the proposition that we're being asked to consider (and consider as a genuine cognitive proposition) is that life is a spiritual (or personal) growth machine...then there would have to be some subject to fill that field with. Someone who is improved by my starving you and killing your kid.

Correct me if I am wrong, but science is not in the business of discovering god or the soul.

What we have, then, is a philosophy of what-ifs that like to pretend at reality.

If god and souls existed, you'd be wrong about that, but it's not really relevant to whether or not we're consistently employing this proposition.

Starving a person and killing their kid either does or does not improve someone.  The forge idea explicitly depends on the suggestion that it does.  Anyone who proposes it must be ready to stare at me killing my neighbor and skullfucking his children..and then insist that someone has been improved by this, or that in some sense someone is improved by living in a world where this can happen. That's just the ground floor. There's no point in going forward to see whether this were justifiable, and whether - if it were - the primary agents require or posses such a justification... unless we have a commitment here, because..without a commitment here, we don't have a soul forge, or any forge, to begin with.

-and to address another poster, there's nothing mysterious about the soul forge. Earthquakes and volcanoes and floods and disease and rape and pillage make us better people, or they don't. I don't think we need to grasp at the unknown to answer that, and fwiw I'm at least sympathetic to the idea.

(December 15, 2020 at 11:16 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: What do you mean you don't understand what I'm getting at?  

If the proposition that we're being asked to consider (and consider as a genuine cognitive proposition) is that life is a spiritual (or personal) growth machine...then there would have to be some subject to fill that field with.  Someone who is improved by my starving you and killing your kid.

I don't understand because you're not attempting to rule out option 4.

You're not explaining how you can know option 4 is not possible.

Case in point, you're positioning for the end (an end that will never come, no less), but won't commit at the beginning. Either you are or you are not willing to posit that someone is improved by my starving you and killing your kid.

If you aren't, then there's nothing to rule out or in in the first place. It was not a genuine cognitive proposition about a soul forge, and nothing about it informs you so much as helps you hold hope alive that no one can rule your god beliefs out. The god belief in question..if I could be so bold, is that there's some good reason to do all of this, that god isn't a monster for doing this.

That, though, is a question that we can answer, and answer in this life, without ever resolving whether or not there is a god or a soul forge.

The problem of evil, in its logical part, is never conclusive. One can babble all they want about specific cases where the amount of suffering seems to be unnecessary and incompatible with omnibenevolence, it doesn't lead to a logical contradiction. And the information assymetry between the observer of suffering and an all-knowing God is gigantic (infinite?). Maybe earthquakes are some heartless demon inflicting random damage by his own free will, after all?

The Qur'an gives another all encompassing response to this kind of doomed arguments, : (23:109) "Behold, there were among My servants such as would pray, ‘O our Sustainer! We have come to believe [in Thee]; forgive, then, our sins and bestow Thy mercy on us: for Thou art the truest bestower of mercy!’ (23:110) "But ye treated them with ridicule, so much so that (ridicule of) them made you forget My Message while ye were laughing at them! ".

In other words: God responds to anyone defending himself by invoking evil that there are servants - i.e. theists - who believed in him, and prayed for mercy, reconciling belief with evil anyway. If it were possible for the latter to reconcile omnibenevolence with suffering, then what didn't you do the same thing ?

Besides, there are compelling arguments for God's existence based on the existence of evil. If one accepts there is evil, then he accepts, implicitly, that there is goodness, and matter doesn't know good and evil, a moral agent must exist !

(December 15, 2020 at 1:06 pm)Klorophyll Wrote: Besides, there are compelling arguments for God's existence based on the existence of evil. If one accepts there is evil, then he accepts, implicitly, that there is goodness, and matter doesn't know good and evil, a moral agent must exist !

Yes, moral agents exist. How you get from there to God is something I'm not going to speculate upon.

(December 15, 2020 at 1:04 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Case in point, you're positioning for the end (an end that will never come, no less), but won't commit at the beginning.  Either you are or you are not willing to posit that someone is improved by my starving you and killing your kid.

If you aren't, then there's nothing to rule out or in in the first place.  It was not a genuine cognitive proposition about a soul forge, and nothing about it informs you so much as helps you hold hope alive that no one can rule your god beliefs out.  The god belief in question..if I could be so bold, is that there's some good reason to do all of this, that god isn't a monster for doing this.

That, though, is a question that we can answer without ever resolving whether or not there is a god or a soul forge.

Is it fair to say, your claim;
We can "know" now, whether option 4 is the case or not?

Have I misunderstood?

Either starving you and killing your kid is a means of improvement, or it's not. If it is, we can continue, if it's not, then we've answered the question already.

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(December 15, 2020 at 1:06 pm)Klorophyll Wrote:  Maybe earthquakes are some heartless demon inflicting random damage by his own free will, after all?

Excellent suggestion, then it's not a soul forge at all.  It's just some random asshole doing bad shit.  

Now dial that all the way up to your silly god.

I tend to think that earthquakes are a product of geological activity and so have absolutely no moral component..but as we all know, that's just crazy talk. Meanwhile, more crazy talk..I'm matter...and I know good and evil, so....?