What's good and evil is you and me.
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Current time: January 1, 2025, 1:16 pm
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Evil God and anti-theodicy
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I have tied myself in knots trying to disprove the existence of God. It simply is not possible.
(August 21, 2023 at 8:22 am)FrustratedFool Wrote:(August 21, 2023 at 8:14 am)GrandizerII Wrote: I think one of my struggles with this kind of argument is what do we mean by "evil God" exactly? Do we mean a maximal being that is consistently evil in the human sense, thus always lying, never showing love, and constantly enjoying the suffering of others? It seems to me that as problematic as the idea of a loving God may be, there appear to be more problems with having an evil God instead. I find that being consistently good (in the human sense) is more conceivable than being consistently evil. There were like three arguments (or key points) in my post, though admittedly not very well thought out, since I just only thought about this a short while ago after reading your OP, so all the points I'm making here are on the spot and liable to contain a few fallacies, I'm sure. Ok, think of it like this: if the theist says God is good (or the standard of good or whatever), then you come along and suggest God is evil (or the standard of evil or whatever), what did that accomplish exactly? As far as I can see, it didn't really change anything about God's nature, all what changed were words. And so the theist is just going to shrug this one off (if that's all that is really happening). As for what you consider to be my strongest argument, I actually consider to be quite weak compared to the point made in my previous paragraph. And not really sure how to pursue this one further. (August 21, 2023 at 9:10 am)MarcusA Wrote: I have tied myself in knots trying to disprove the existence of God. It simply is not possible. It seems to me that nothing can be proven or disproven outside of maths, and the only fact that can be 100% known is that qualia exists. That said, I think good arguments can be forwarded to convince many that God likely doesn't exist. RE: Evil God and anti-theodicy
August 21, 2023 at 9:17 am
(This post was last modified: August 21, 2023 at 9:17 am by FrustratedFool.)
(August 21, 2023 at 9:11 am)GrandizerII Wrote:(August 21, 2023 at 8:22 am)FrustratedFool Wrote: I don't think there's any conceptual issue, in that they seem equivalent. And there's certainly no problem explaining fun with an anti-theodicy in the same way that theists would explain evil. And also, the issue about substitution seems moot since in both cases we'd argue it was only an analogous good/evil based on human perception. I guess the outworked consequences of that language change are what changes. When theists say God is good they mean not just the tautology that God has the nature that He has, but that His nature is in some meaningful way analogous to the way humans intuit goodness - that in the same way we value courage, self-sacrifice, self-discipline, fairness, justice, kindness, etc God exemplifies those and has them in perfect or infinite measure. Thus they seek to explain evil and suffering and don't explain goodness and pleasure, and they trust that God desires to answer prayers that ask for such things and hope for an afterlife where there is an abundance of good and a lack of evil. And evil God would flip that.
Humanity should be enough for all of us.
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