The Ultimate Why There Is Evil in the World Thread.

[Neo-Scholastic]

The problem of evil isn't meant to disprove god, it disproves an omniscient, omnipotent omni-benevolent god.

No it doesn't. People who say that generally make the mistake of thinking that the omni-traits allow anything at all to be possible. Omniscient means knowing everything of which it is possible to know. Omnipotent means having the power to achieve any possible goal. And Omni-benevolent mean desirous of producing good to the greatest possible extent.

Also, if god is omniscient, we don't have any free will. In fact, neither does he. He knows what he will do before he does it, and he can't choose otherwise.

It would appear to be the case, except that God is a fully actualized being. While this is extremely difficult to imagine it can be known conceptually. Terms like free will and choice simply have no relevance to God.

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I've got all the proof you could ever want. 100%, copper-bottomed, irrefutable proof. But you'll just deny it because you hate the implications of a godless world and just want to go on sanctimising. So why should I tell you?

Don't worry I will return to the stone in your shoe. I may choose to start a thread by that title, in which case I let your know.

[Hatshepsut]

...on sanctimising.

--- (gerund), in USA with z. A new word. I'll have to add it to my dictionary. As distinguished from sanctifying.  

Really the ball is in the atheist court because it is up to them to show that a perfect world is even possible.

"A perfect world": what the hell is that?  ... it doesn't mean the non-chirpers need to respond.

The "Best of All Worlds" thing has been hammered to death by now, yet Chad's complaint has a tweet of merit. In particular, to knock omnibenevolence from its pedestal, the atheists need demonstrate the stronger result that God has failed to create the "best of all possible worlds," not merely that he has failed to create a perfect one.

The only thing I see established in the omnibenevolence goings-on is that we humans can conceive of only limited benevolence. Things get problematic real fast if this quality starts existing in infinite measure.  

[FatAndFaithless]

I find an infinite measure of anything to be problematic, which is why I'm very leery of any "omni" claim about anything, including something being 'eternal'.

[Whateverist]

The problem of evil isn't meant to disprove god, it disproves an omniscient, omnipotent omni-benevolent god.

No it doesn't. People who say that generally make the mistake of thinking that the omni-traits allow anything at all to be possible. Omniscient means knowing everything of which it is possible to know. Omnipotent means having the power to achieve any possible goal. And Omni-benevolent mean desirous of producing good to the greatest possible extent.

Sounds reasonable to me. I've tried to challenge the idea that a creator god would have carte blanch control to set the parameters of her creation as she sees fit. Why couldn't there be some underlying substrate which any would be creator god would have to come to grips with to create anything at all? But I'm used to believers insisting god has no constraints and that she makes up all the rules of what is possible as she goes too. As you know, some like to argue the fact that there are a even a few pockets of the universe not entirely hostile to our existence is evidence of a fine tuning god.

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I find an infinite measure of anything to be problematic, which is why I'm very leery of any "omni" claim about anything, including something being 'eternal'.

Oh yeah?  Well I'm omni-leery.  Checkmate.

[Nope]

Sorry for having created a thread and not checking back in for awhile. I have not been feeling well. 

[rexbeccarox]

Really the ball is in the atheist court because it is up to them to show that a perfect world is even possible.

"A perfect world": what the hell is that?  ... it doesn't mean the non-chirpers need to respond.

The "Best of All Worlds" thing has been hammered to death by now, yet Chad's complaint has a tweet of merit. In particular, to knock omnibenevolence from its pedestal, the atheists need demonstrate the stronger result that God has failed to create the "best of all possible worlds," not merely that he has failed to create a perfect one.

The only thing I see established in the omnibenevolence goings-on is that we humans can conceive of only limited benevolence. Things get problematic real fast if this quality starts existing in infinite measure.  

First: "the atheists" don't have to do anything.  Atheists need not demonstrate anything about a god... like, since we lack a belief in such an entity, we don't think "God has failed" anything.  The only reason some of use that language is because it's that of the religious person we're speaking to, and we're challenging their beliefs.

Second: you have a real problem with this shit.  I'm really sick of you lumping atheists together the way you do.  

[Nope]

I find the whole business of arguing that God doesn't exist and then blaming him for the needle and the damage done a bit hard to understand

I don't believe  fictional characters in literature are real but I've had plenty of interesting debates about their motives.  
If another person declared  Voldemort was real, I would inform him that the wizard was fictional but I would also try to use their own beliefs to disprove the existence of Tom Riddle.  

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Yawn. This argument is so old that it has grown a beard touching the floor.

God, according to your believe (I was Catholic too, you know) is omnipotent and omniscent. So, following that line of thought, he knows what you will do at every moment in your life before you are even born. The caring parent argument doesn't fly.

I'm not following you.

Yes, God is omnipotent and omniscient. And because He cares for us, he directs us and asks us to do things that are for our good.

How does that not follow? I do the same with my kids.


I direct them to take a bath and brush their teeth. I tell them to do their homework. I ask them to help clean the house EVEN THOUGH I COULD DO IT FASTER MYSELF because they are being trained.

Make sense?

Except the punishment for your children failing to do those things is not an eternity of torture.  

[Cyberman]

...on sanctimising.

--- (gerund), in USA with z. A new word. I'll have to add it to my dictionary. As distinguished from sanctifying.  

Neologism, completely distinct from sanctifying (to consecrate). Sanctimise: (v) to go around being a sanctimonious cunt.

You're welcome. Just don't get adding an unnecessary and illiterate 'z' simply as a reminder of how a letter is supposed to sound.

[robvalue]

If this world is the best God could do, with the most favourable pleasure to suffering balance, then he is pathetic quite honestly and it's irresponsible of him to be creating anything.

Either that, or his influence ended a long, long time ago and we've been forgotten about. Maybe we were a practice run that he failed to delete when he was through with us.

[Pyrrho]

...

Really the ball is in the atheist court because it is up to them to show that a perfect world is even possible.

"A perfect world": what the hell is that?  ... it doesn't mean the non-chirpers need to respond.

The "Best of All Worlds" thing has been hammered to death by now, yet Chad's complaint has a tweet of merit. In particular, to knock omnibenevolence from its pedestal, the atheists need demonstrate the stronger result that God has failed to create the "best of all possible worlds," not merely that he has failed to create a perfect one.

The only thing I see established in the omnibenevolence goings-on is that we humans can conceive of only limited benevolence. Things get problematic real fast if this quality starts existing in infinite measure.  

I can tell you how this will go, but first I will show that this is not the best of all possible worlds.  Let us consider penicillin.  When penicillin was introduced, that improved the world, as it reduced unnecessary suffering.  If there were a God, that being could have introduced penicillin in 1800 (and yes, earlier, and could also have created a world where penicillin was not needed, but let us keep this simple).  Since God did not do so, we know that this is not the best of all possible worlds.

Humans are constantly trying to improve the world, and they do occasionally succeed.  The fact that they are able to improve it proves that it was inferior, and consequently it could not have been the best it could have been, for every invention and improvement could have been provided by God beforehand.


Now, I will go back to what I was mentioning at first in my post, about how this will go.  The religionist refuses to accept any evidence of anything on this issue.  It does not matter what proofs one puts forth; they are rejected out of hand, with some bullshit like, "God's ways show infinite foresight, " etc.  Basically, they take a position in which there is nothing that they would accept as evidence against their position.  So it is a pretense to reason, as the reality is that they reject all reason on the matter and simply dogmatically assert that this is somehow best, in some mysterious, inscrutable way.


There is another point, though, which you are wrong about.  Specifically, "...the atheists need demonstrate the stronger result that God has failed to create the "best of all possible worlds," not merely that he has failed to create a perfect one."  The theist needs to prove that creating a universe is better than not creating one.  Creating a bad universe is worse than nothing, and we have no reason to suppose that this universe is, overall, better than nothing.  Think of all of the suffering in the world, of children starving to death, children being raped and brutalized, children burning in fires, children dying of all manner of painful diseases, etc., etc., etc.  The idea that this world is better than nothing is ridiculous.

Voltaire had the proper response to these issues with his Candide.  The idea that this is the best of all possible worlds is more worthy of ridicule than of argument.