Hostage to fear

[Spacetime]

You must not be thoughtful about what I have told you about me, or my former faith, or my sincerity, or my devotion to understanding Christianity (as a faith, lifestyle, etc.). If you're not being thoughtful about what I've said, how can we meet on honest terms as men?

Yes, I'm aware of the fact that WE are discussing theodicy.

And I was not speaking of the Argument for Fine Tuning which demonstrates the existence of God. I was arguing for the Fine Tuning of the Evidence which is a phrase I coined a few days ago (for fun) to explain how God uses JUST ENOUGH evidence to enable you to find him without using so much evidence that you are coerced. Since each person is different, it is my contention that God uses varying amounts of evidence for each person based upon their individual needs. Thus, He "fine tunes" the evidence to the right balance for YOU, and Jenny A, and robvalue, and so forth.

What proof do you have have God "fine tunes" evidence? Evidence cannot change, it can only be misunderstood as evidence for a positive claim when later experimentation proves the positive claim as inaccurate.

Your kind is humankind, and your mind is finitemind. You simply are not in a position to be able to judge whether the infinite God has sufficient reasons for allowing suffering. Sorry, mate, but your arms are too short to box with God.

Your scriptures prove that I can know the difference between good and evil. Are you denying Holy Scripture?

So far, I have simply presented the logical explanation that the existence of suffering is not incompatible with the existence of a loving God. Until you see this, we are kinda stuck. So, here it is all clinical and stuff:

The Intellectual or Logical Problem of Evil

Those who argue the logical problem of evil are attempting to show that God is a contradiction. Typically, the argument follows a form such as:

P1. God must be all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good.
P2. An all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good being could eliminate evil.
P3. Evil exists.
C.  Therefore, God does not exist.

I don't posit your "C". Call me atypical. My model looks like this;

1. Orthodox Christianity declares god as omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipresent.
2. An omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipresent god could eliminate evil.
3. Evil exists.
4. Your god is a murderous, evil tyrant who is childishly jealous and has very low self-confidence. There may very well be a god, but he certainly is not the personal, theistic god of Jewish, Christian, or Islamic scripture.

However, for this argument to work, it must also prove an implicit fourth premise:

P4. God can have no good reason to allow evil to exist

Theist Response:

If God has morally sufficient reasons to allow even one act of evil, then the argument falls apart, because this would show that God and the existence of evil are not logically contradictory. God might allow evil in view of His overriding goals for mankind, such as the goal of giving human beings free will.

If God had made us like robots which did evil things, then God would be responsible for those evils since as robots, we would simply do as we were designed. However, we are not robots; we have free will, and we can choose to do good or evil. Consequently, God is not responsible for our choices.

Agnostic scholar Paul Draper acknowledges that “theists face no serious logical problem of evil”

Way to take Paul Draper out of context... ?! Paul Draper purports that a theistic god (same applies in the plural) would have to be indifferent to evil. That's his claim. Indifferent to evil. You have a lot of work to do to get to the conclusion that this indifference is congruent with your church's claim that this god is a personal, loving god. I would be more likely to believe you had you just said, "My God is omni-douchey." I, the "humankind/finitekind" human, know the difference between good and evil... according to the scriptures you deny. So, again, being an authority on good and evil, per the scripture, I declare your god omni-douchey and evil. Next!

while J.L. Mackie, a staunch defender of the problem of evil argument reluctantly admits “We can concede that the problem of evil does not, after all, show that the central doctrines of theism are logically inconsistent with one another.”

Not at all, I'm totally on board with that, as long as you understand that your god is a prick. If your god exists, surely it is beyond any human understanding, and nothing in scripture could even come close to helping "humankind/finitekind" to understand more about it. So, this god reveals all of these stories of it commanding people to hack at the necks of an entire nation including babies and married women (except their virgins! ...I mean c'mon... what's more benevolent than adopting 12 year old virgins as slaves!? Am I right, Randy?), knowing our human understanding would be contradictory to the theme stories as moral guidance... and expects us to follow it?

You are correct in saying that the bear analogy was not great...at least in response to the Euthyphro Dilemma. But then, I was not using the bear analogy in order to respond to that, was I? The purpose of that analogy was simply to show that we cannot know God's mind regarding the suffering we experience any more than the bear can know the hunter's reasons for acting.

Now, to Euthyphro: boy, I'd love to claim credit for solving that dilemma, but that I cannot do. Here is how the dilemma is avoided entirely by the Christian:

....[stuff I've either read/watched or was aware of long ago and have already considered]....

Now, to the "Christian" answer to the Euthyphro Dilemma (which actually makes it a trilemma):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI3MdrQMTUw

I simply did not feel the need to quote the ECF's when I have been asking questions about your experiences as well as making a few opening points regarding the Problem of Pain. I have hundreds of quotes from the ECF's on a wide variety of topics stored on my hard drive. When appropriate, I will copypasta them...you can count on it.

You must literally believe that I have not considered the arguments you have presented so far. I'm afraid that's the nature of "knowing" someone over the internet. The points you've presented as original, and the ones you agree with, are all topics I've considered long ago... and believe are not convincing.... at all.

The answer to your question of whether or not I was willing to follow Christ has been answered. The answer is a profound yes. Then you forked the conversation. I don't know if you're avoiding this or not... but you've still not answered my original question. So I'll post it here again. Hopefully, you'll answer it this time (third time's the charm, I guess?).

The bible mentions belief as though it were a choice. I've found that my Christian identity is wholly wrapped up in trying (desperately) to believe, when I simply have not been convinced. A positive affirmation of belief "on" Christ Jesus would be a lie in my case... something that very doctrine prohibits. What I do believe is that I've made tremendous effort in trying to believe, by investigating the faith. Without deconstructing this paragraph, please address this over all point; If belief is a choice and there is evidence that this belief is convincing and rational, why hasn't this evidence rationally convinced me to believe? Especially when I'm not ignorant to it... down to its most specific points.