Epicurus riddle.

[athrock]

Because they do not want to obey, to submit or to worship.

Hey, Satan knew who God is better than any of us, but he preferred his own will to God's will.

We're all guilty of this to varying degrees.

So..we all actually know God exists, but consciously turn away from him?

Some do. There is a range of "knowledge", and God knows what each of us is accountable for.

However, if you will read the wording of Chad's post to which I responded, it should be obvious that we are discussing the response of those who do know that God exists and yet refuse to accept His free gift of salvation.

There are, of course, others who know less. Even these, however, know of the Laws of Human Nature (justice, mercy, etc.) that have been written on every heart (conscience). They will be judged according to what they know and how they responded to that knowledge.

[FatAndFaithless]

So..we all actually know God exists, but consciously turn away from him?

Some do. There is a range of "knowledge", and God knows what each of us is accountable for.

However, if you will read the wording of Chad's post to which I responded, it should be obvious that we are discussing the response of those who do know that God exists and yet refuse to accept His free gift of salvation.

There are, of course, others who know less. Even these, however, know of the Laws of Human Nature (justice, mercy, etc.) that have been written on every heart (conscience). They will be judged according to what they know and how they responded to that knowledge.

Um...okay?  I suppose if I asked you how to tell between someone who does 'know' that god exists versus someone who doesn't 'know' that god exists, you'd say that's something only God knows?

[Mudhammam]

Plantinga has already shown that the existence of evil is not incompatible with God. Heavy-weight scholars are satisfied with his solution.

Not saying that there won't be a few hard-core outliers (out & out liars?) who still object, but this issue is pretty much all over but the shouting. 

Only the uninformed continue squawking along these lines.

Tell that to the scholars at Notre Dame (Plantinga's employer): https://youtu.be/NXj8iTyZiRA

[Mudhammam]

Hopefully you can accept that what I say when I tell you that I in no way want to minimize the misery of human existence. It’s awful and heartbreaking. There is much joy as well, but it never seems to be enough.

I agree that the logical structure of the argument is sound. Its validity all depends on the nature of those “certain attributes” found in the premises: omnipotence and omni-benevolence. I have already explained my position on these, so I see no need to repeat. But it may help, since Epicurus lived before the Christian era, to put those positions in a better context.

It seems that the Bible doesn’t actually say that God is omnipotent, only that He is Almighty. This is to say, it tells of a god more powerful that all other gods. I would say the early Christians, minus the Gnostics, would have maintained this Judaic god concept. Grappling with their own special revelation, Muslim scholars before the Scholastic period expanded on the concept of God’s transcendence to the point that, in Islam, reason is insufficient to say anything meaningful about God, i.e. Allah is beyond the reach of reason
.
What makes the late Christian concept of God unique is the belief that God is intelligible. That puts Him somewhere between an ancient Jewish god that merely the most powerful one and an Islamic god that is capable of doing the inconceivable. When the Schoolmen reconciled the Biblical God with a neo-Platonic “God of the Philosophers” they gave us to understand a God who can do anything that is logically possible. He cannot alter the value of pi. He cannot be both complete and immutable. He cannot cease His own existence. With respect to miracles, from the biblical examples given God seems to intervene with no other goal than to make Himself known in ways not inferable from nature. Providence nearly always works in accordance with natural processes, which presumably reflect God’s nature. Even if these limitations are granted, it is still hard to rationalize that logical limitations prevent Him from curing an infant’s cancer. I take these as matter of degree and not differences in kind. I could give many analogies, none of which seem emotionally satisfactory.

The same kind of thinking applies with regards to God’s omni-benevolence. If I am not mistaken, either Drich or Godschild has promoted the concept that the Bible doesn’t say God is omni-benevolent. That’s actually true. The most it says is that He is Just. Conversely many New Age Christians believe in a mysterious emanation of Love, if only we could receive it (i.e. blame the victim.) Both the Church of Rome, Orthodoxy, and New Church theology have more subtle doctrines, but review of those would far exceed the scope of a single post. As mentioned previously, these revolve around restorative justice and kenosis. If reason did not firmly assure me of God’s existence, I would not be swayed by the possibility of God’s mitigating actions. If God is indeed all-loving, then creation must be metaphysically optimized in such a way that it is ultimately made whole by our participation and struggle within it and Christians have as their example our Lord’s ultimate triumph over betrayal, brutal torture, and painful death. We suffer nothing that God Himself has not endured to achieve Glory.

This was a good read. Thanks for the reply.


Granted that one of the solutions to the Epicurean paradox is to conceive of a God whom is neither omnibenevolent nor omnipotent, but who is in some sense just, and very powerful (though with certain limitations), it sounds to me like you're saying this is in fact the biblical conception of God, at least in the Old Testament. This doesn't accord with the Christian scholastics, as you say, who argued for God's perfection, which they thought included infinite power and goodness, but I see no reason why this is required if we understand "god" in a looser sense... unless we are obliged to argue as Anselm or Descartes did in their respective ontological arguments. But, if this is so, it seems that we would have to say that God is not powerful enough to intervene in nature to prevent what do in fact appear to be obvious injustices, such as the example you cited regarding infants with cancer, or we must make a choice between a powerful (not necessarily all-powerful) deity capable of the miraculous, but not just, or a just and powerful god who cannot prevent nature from acting differently than the way that the laws were initially arranged for nature to act, for which he more likely than not lacked a complete grasp of their often devastating and unjust consequences when they were first put into action by him - which exculpates his responsibility for both natural and moral evil.

[robvalue]

To me the most sensible defence of God is that he is indeed not all powerful. He could then still be "a nice guy", and would not be responsible for the bad stuff. He didn't create anything, but he is acting as an agent to hold back "worse stuff" that could be happening. He's like our celestial Men in Black.

That would at least be in line with the evidence, although it would still amount to an unecessary assumption. He would actually be far more worthy of praise/worship, as he's doing a real selfless job with limited powers and resources, instead of scratching his arse while kids get raped.

[Angrboda]

Wrong question. Why do some people turn down the love He ceaselessly offers and reject His blessings?

Because they do not want to obey, to submit or to worship.

Hey, Satan knows who God is better than any of us, but he still preferred his own will to God's will because of his great self-love.

We're all guilty of this to varying degrees.

This is an equivocation. To know the fictional character that is God is not the same as knowing the transcendent being, God. I do not know that God exists in the same way that I know that I exist. You're just playing with words to avoid making the accusation that atheists are outright liars. I resolutely am not in denial of my true feelings and beliefs about God, and that you would imply such is offensive. For what it's worth, I do not disbelieve your god because I am unwilling to obey, submit, or worship. I disbelieve your god because I think he doesn't exist. Your implying that I am simply in rebellion or denial is ridiculous and offensive. It is an accusation of bad faith. You don't have a clue what the real reasons are.

[Brian37]

“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?”

Opinions on this riddle?

Not once in my 15 year history of online debate, have I seen the slightest credible refutation to it. I've seen tons of bullshit religious apologies to attempt to refute it, and sometimes their word salad of a skunky argument gets a new tux, but once you peal back the layers of the onion, it is still a skunk.

The theist starts with a naked assertion, then adds to it impossible attributes that when compared to reality, don't match up.

It amounts to, even if we agreed a god did exist, you could only come to the logical conclusion that he is a dick and we are merely his lab rats. I understand it offends believers to have it put like that, but the issue is the logic, not their personal rights.

The examples I like to use are as follows.

1. If you had a kid you want baby sat and the baby sitter had a 357 magnum to protect it with, but said to you  "In my past I had my gun while baby sitting. I baby sat 99 kids. 33 attempts by child molesters I shot and killed before they got through the door. 33 I let in, allowed them to molest the kid, but shot and killed them afterwords. 33 I let go and did nothing."

How many sane parents in their right mind would allow their kid to be hurt, if they had the power to stop it every single time? So why would you hire a baby sitter who claimed that they could do that, but had such a spotty record?

2. Or, say you go to see a Superman Movie  and in it Clark Kent walks by an ally and sees a women getting raped, watches her get her throat slit, bleed out and die, then only turns into Superman after the fact. How many people would value such a plot?

NOW combine those two metaphors with reality. The reality that 50 million humans die worldwide per year from everything. They die stillborn, they die from childhood disease, famine. And adults as well, die from disease, natural disaster, crime and war. WORLDWIDE. 50 million, that is half a billion humans in 10 years, and 1 billion humans dying in 20 years.

Now, that says to me, not for emotional reasons, but purely for logical reasons, that a god is not involved in anything and does not exist.

BUT,  if we pretend one does exist, for argument's sake only, I still can only come to a conclusion based on the parameters believers offer, that this character is not someone worth following, much less worshiping. Humans have the capability to display much better morality than the gods they worship.

[Neo-Scholastic]

You say god doesnt exist and besides he's an asshole. Well I didn't sleep with your sister and besides she's a terrible lay.

[Brian37]

You say god doesnt exist and besides he's an asshole. Well I didn't sleep with your sister and besides she's a terrible lay.

Why would you need to fuck a women to know if she is bad at sex? If you have their boyfriend or husband or video tape that acts as your evidence. Metaphorically speaking.

Again this is the same stupid logic people use when they say "You didn't see it personally".

SCIENTIFIC METHOD can measure the unseen, by what it does to the material around it we do see. It is why while we cant physically see the center of a black hole, we can mathematically deduce what happens to that material when sucked in.

We cant physically see what happened before the microwave background radiation. Jut just like a 500 piece puzzle the gaps can be filled mathematically. Just like we were not around at the beginning of evolution, we have fossils and DNA that prove evolution.

No different than a murder investigation. The suspect is never around when the police are called, but through investigation, they find fingerprints, weapons, and today, cell phone and computer records.

But even back then, the Epicurus thought experiment was a damned good guess, even though he couldn't have know scientifically what someone like Hawkings knows today "A god is not required".

Atheists don't assign the attribute "all" to a god, they do. We merely take their example, and tell them why the logic is not matching up with what we observe. It simply makes much more sense with what we know today to say humans merely like what they believe when they make god claims.

Based on the parameters THEY set, there is no way one could call such a being moral, even if it did exist, which it does not in any case.

[LadyForCamus]

“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?”

Opinions on this riddle?

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
God is willing and able.
Is he able, but not willing?
Yes, no.
Is he both able and willing?
Yes.
Then whence cometh evil?
Free will
Is he neither able nor willing?
No.
Then why call him God?”
Redundant question.

Opinions on this riddle?
God enables us to have free will, meaning that some will do evil and some won't. It's our choice, God is allowing us to determine our fate and he is very patient. Evil will be dealt with in his time.

So...then why bother to pray for anything if God is keeping his fat nose out of everything? That makes no sense.