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"God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil"
#1
"God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil"
Hello, I am new to the forum, it's been a while since I've been in a theological discussion (after being banned off 'reasonable faith' for making someone butthurt by using sarcasm on someone who literally thought the devil was causing all the atheists to behave as they do), and I also don't believe in... Thor, Apolo, Krishna, Zeus, you get the point.

But people seems to get alittle rustled when I pick on the Judeo christian god, like it's special god (aka, special pleading), then ask me to justify my disbelief. I often point out that the problem of evil is a good reason to not believe, but an even more often apologetic's sentence is thrown out: "God has morally sufficient reasons to permit evil".

I don't know about any of you, but I think this answer is truly a cop out. It's a rephrase of "god works in mysterious ways". And the 'mysteriousness' is the fact we can never know the mind of god, and he 'probably' has good reasons why he gives babies aids, and aborts even more children every day. They argue that "you'd have to be omniscient to say if god doesn't have morally sufficient reasons. If we changed on thing about the current system of the Earth, we wouldn't be able to tell if the overall suffering decreased or increased overall!". This is basically an appeal to mystery and the unknown, and the response itself is adhoc (I won't explain that here, but Richard Carrier used Bayes theorem on god, which actually made an all good god statistically impossible when theists gave that excuse, an evil god is much more probably, talking in the millions of times more probable).

To win this is actually very simple, I can get us to agnosticism in a few seconds, here is what my reply would be:

You'd have to be omniscient to know if god DOES have morally sufficient reasons! The question of whether god has morally sufficient reasons is UNKNOWN, so therefore you are unjustified in proposing a god. Also, as the proposer of this god, you have failed to meet the burden of proof. It is not me who has to prove god has insufficient reasons, but for you to prove god does have sufficient reasons. You've just proposed an unknown filler "god has x", we don't know what 'x' is. This is simply ad hoc excuse making for Jesus.

But I want to go further than that, and shoulder the burden. So, we need to evaluate the sentence: "Is there unnecessary suffering in the world?" all I have to do is provide ONE example, and if there is unnecessary suffering, god cannot logically exist, as it is a contradiction.

I think the answer is pretty obvious to everyone: Yes! There is unnecessary suffering. Lets give one example: Malaria. So, does malaria have to exist? No. If we removed it tomorrow, would overall people be in a state of less suffering? Yes. So it logically follows that because malaria exists, god cannot logically exist, as he has the power to personally intervene, but does not.

The only way theists can now hold their positions is by maintaining: "Removing malaria would not decrease suffering, as we can never the know the large scale consequences of stopping one thing in a large system" which is about logically inconsistent as "Jonny removing his hand from a hot stove will not decrease his pain, as we can never know the large scale consequences of stopping one small thing in a large system". It's pretty obvious that if you remove something that causes suffering, it will reduce suffering, well generally.

Sure, Jonny could take his hand off the stove and accidentally fall in a lake of Parana's, but generally, if less people had their hands on stoves (and god knows why the hell they'd do that) there will be overall less pain. Arguing otherwise is nonsensical. So that leads to the conclusion: God has no morally sufficient reasons for permitting suffering/evil, as this evil is ultimately pointless and causes overall more suffering, which is completely needless and obviously leads to no ultimate good.

Quote:Is God willing to prevent 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 evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? -Epicurus

Atheists: Winning the argument since 33 AD.
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#2
RE: "God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil"
Well you have to remember, apologists have to make some case for why the almighty would allow for evil to exist through sin. The morally sufficient reason they nearly always propose is libertarian free will via Alvin Plantinga's Free will Defense. I think that does defeat the logical problem of evil (potentially), although some recent developments by other philosophers challenge this.

Regardless, the evidential problem of evil (better put as the problem of suffering), the problem of heaven and the problem of Divine Freedom I think deliver a KO to Plantinga's FWD. At the risk of sounding a bit arrogant, I'd through the argument I made in this thread as being a problem for Plantinga's argument or any other theodicy as well.
"The reason things will never get better is because people keep electing these rich cocksuckers who don't give a shit about you."
-George Carlin
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#3
RE: "God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil"
(December 10, 2013 at 12:06 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: Well you have to remember, apologists have to make some case for why the almighty would allow for evil to exist through sin. The morally sufficient reason they nearly always propose is libertarian free will via Alvin Plantinga's Free will Defense. I think that does defeat the logical problem of evil (potentially), although some recent developments by other philosophers challenge this.

Regardless, the evidential problem of evil (better put as the problem of suffering), the problem of heaven and the problem of Divine Freedom I think deliver a KO to Plantinga's FWD. At the risk of sounding a bit arrogant, I'd through the argument I made in this thread as being a problem for Plantinga's argument or any other theodicy as well.

I read your post, and I still think the logical problem of evil is still alive and kicking. I'm not talking about a god stopping human beings from doing evil things, I think that has been pretty much done and dusted, even if it's still questionable. I'm talking about natural suffering/evil, which is why I talked about malaria for example. The existence of just one unnecessary case of suffering logically contradicts any modern ideas of an all powerful deity, and I think malaria is the perfect example. Is it that hard for a god to make a world without these blatant issues? From what I can see, we're living in a universe which looks exactly how it should be if there were no god.
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#4
RE: "God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil"
We don't know the large scale and long term effect of one instance of suffering. But god does. Not only does he know this, he supposedly has to power to intervene at every single case if he can intervene at one. If we're supposing that god has the ability but is withholding it for secret reasons, then it has to be granted that he has the power to intervene. So if you're omniscient and omnipotent, you should be able to eliminate all suffering. So even if small scale suffering does truly reduce large scale suffering, then god is simply taking the easy way out.
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#5
RE: "God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil"
(December 10, 2013 at 12:06 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: Well you have to remember, apologists have to make some case for why the almighty would allow for evil to exist through sin. The morally sufficient reason they nearly always propose is libertarian free will via Alvin Plantinga's Free will Defense. I think that does defeat the logical problem of evil (potentially), although some recent developments by other philosophers challenge this.

There's a simple response to the free will defense, and that's that an omnipotent god could easily stop the effects of evil actions from taking effect: a murderer's bullet just misses, a rapist is struck with impotency so long as the woman he's with isn't consenting, etc etc. Free will isn't predicated on the idea that your every action will succeed if you choose to do it, just that you can choose to do it.

And hell, with a god this apparently committed to keeping himself hidden, I doubt we'd ever be fully trained out of that behavior by constant failure anyway, since without a clear cause, maybe the next time could be the time an evil action actually succeeds. Tongue
"YOU take the hard look in the mirror. You are everything that is wrong with this world. The only thing important to you, is you." - ronedee

Want to see more of my writing? Check out my (safe for work!) site, Unprotected Sects!
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#6
RE: "God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil"
Is suffering inherently evil?
". . . let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist." -G. K. Chesterton
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#7
RE: "God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil"
(December 11, 2013 at 4:48 am)GodsRevolt Wrote: Is suffering inherently evil?

When it exists unnecessarily AND as the result of another's deliberate intent or neglect.

Since suffering must be unnecessary in a universe created by a god who can (and does) control every aspect of that universe, then if the Christian God exists and has the qualities Christians attribute to him (omnipotence, omniscience), then all suffering is deliberate and exists only because of God's desire to see it happen.
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#8
RE: "God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil"
So, WITH God, suffering is evil.

What is it without God?
". . . let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist." -G. K. Chesterton
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#9
RE: "God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil"
(December 11, 2013 at 5:19 am)GodsRevolt Wrote: So, WITH God, suffering is evil.

What is it without God?

Not preferable, if it can be at all helped.
"YOU take the hard look in the mirror. You are everything that is wrong with this world. The only thing important to you, is you." - ronedee

Want to see more of my writing? Check out my (safe for work!) site, Unprotected Sects!
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#10
RE: "God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil"
(December 11, 2013 at 5:19 am)GodsRevolt Wrote: So, WITH God, suffering is evil.

What is it without God?

Understandable in a universe where there is no controlling intelligence.
Kuusi palaa, ja on viimeinen kerta kun annan vaimoni laittaa jouluvalot!
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