Where do you stand on the existence of God?

[Redbeard The Pink]

Ok, but if he's omniscient, then he would know in advance that creating nature would result in cancer eventually, so he's still responsible for the existence of cancer any way you slice it. If your Gaud is all-powerful and created everything with full knowledge of how it would unfold, then he is personally and solely responsible for everything that happens in the entire Universe, beginning to end. Suffering, evil, disease, death...all of it.

1. As far as suffering and death go, I have already explained what I believe God's thoughts are on those. It was on my post to Simon Moon. 

2. As far as God's responsibility for death and suffering goes, yes, we believe He created the world and knew ahead of time what would happen with everything. So if you want to say that He is "solely responsible" for those, I don't have a problem with it. I wouldn't word it that way and I don't think of it that way, but it's just a matter of semantics I think. 

Anyway, the belief goes that even with all the suffering we feel on earth, in the end, everything will be made right. The good that will come of it all will surpass and overcome any pain and suffering we endure in this world. We believe that God, through his omniscience, can see this and that is why He still chose to create us and this world we live in. 

And you can't forget that we believe He suffered with us too. He made Himself man and died the most painful and unjust and horrific death. The belief goes that He felt more physical pain than any other human ever will. And His Mother, not only lost her child (the absolute worst thing a person can go through), but she had to watch him suffer the worst death imaginable.    

That was God's way of saying "yes, I understand and I feel your pain and your suffering. I suffer with you. And my Mother suffers with you too. But in the end all will be made right, and the good will surpass and overcome the bad."

3. Now as far as evil being God's "responsibility" as well, that is where I object. Per our beliefs, evil is the absence of God. We believe God is love and kindness and mercy and goodness, etc etc. Evil is the absence of those things. And that happens when a being makes the conscious decision to turn away from those things. Hate and disregard for others. Vengeance. Cruelty. That's evil.  

Anyway, those are my views, and how I understand it. I hope that sheds some light.

I'm aware you've addressed it already, and I'm saying that regardless of how Gaud "feels" about death and suffering, the point is that an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful Gaud should have been able to create reality without those things, but didn't, ergo he wanted those things to exist and be inflicted upon us, ergo he either does not truly love us, or he is not powerful enough to prevent our suffering.


"Oh, but suffering just makes us stronger, so by allowing us to suffer he's actually helping us."



Ok, but that still leaves us with the fact that he's all-knowing and all-powerful and supposedly designed the system to include the imperative that suffering breeds strength (which it doesn't always, by the way). He could have just as easily created a reality with all the same rules, except that all personal growth is caused by joy instead of suffering and suffering doesn't exist. If he couldn't do this, then he's not all-powerful, and if he could have done it but chose not to, he's not all-loving. It's really quite simple.


As for your definition of evil: it's incorrect, and it's underhandedly designed to preclude your Gaud from the possibility of being described as evil. Evil is the opposite of good. It is commonly defined as profound (and usually deliberate and unabashed) immorality, depravity, and/or wickedness. Because your Gaud is a murdering, genocidal, selfish, rapacious monster, he is evil.


You know what? Let's ditch the word evil for this one. Let's say "sin" instead. Sin is definitely a thing that (according to your Bible) exists, is clearly defined, and is definitely not the "absence" of anything; rather, it's the committing of any action or thought to which Gaud takes offense. The Bible treats this idea as synonymous with evil, but we're going to stick with "sin" instead because it will keep you from weaseling your way out of the problem by bandying semantics over a word that means one thing to theists and another to non-theists.


So according to your Bible, sin is a thing, and according to logical necessity, Gaud is personally and directly responsible for every single sin ever committed by anyone (Satan, humans, doesn't matter). By creating the system with full knowledge that it would produce agents who would sin, and by doing nothing to alter the design, and by not foregoing the creation of the system, Gaud assumes personal responsibility for everything the system does and everything its parts do (including sins). There is no getting out of this. If your Gaud created everything with full knowledge of what it would do, he has no right or reason to grow angry or punish anyone else when his own actions turn out exactly as he knew they would.


That would be similar to me designing a building that I know will collapse in the rain, making a bunch of slaves build it to my exact whims regardless of said knowledge or anyone else's protests, then sentencing those same slaves to death when it inevitably rains and the building inevitably crumbles to mud. I could have changed the design at any point, decided not to build the thing, or any number of other solutions that would prevent the building from falling down, and that makes me completely and solely responsible for the failure even though the slaves were technically the ones doing the building.