Problem of good and evil for an atheist

[fr0d0]

I don't recognise the accusation dbp so bear no guilt. Christianity does not condone action without responsibility. If I think I understand God to be instructing me to do something I have to test that this is true.

An act of evil is already judged to be immoral, and therefore never 'good' in any way. God cannot be evil, so doing evil can never be justified as God inspired.

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God isn't just for no reason. The model is Zen that you're created with a choice to accept or not. It's your choice that condemns you and not God. He just carries out the judgement.

Don't change tack Frodo.

If god is all knowing and all powerful why does he let things get to a point where thousands "need" to be slaughtered?

Why doesn't he deal with the situation before it gets out of hand? Since he supposedly knows beforehand what's going to happen.

I thought I answered the question Zen.

Just like with the scientific justification for associated mass death being a necessary by product of tectonic activity without which there would be no life on earth, humans don't get to have an easy ride. Hedonism for mankind simply isn't reality, it's how it is.

God doesn't change what happens because he wants that to happen.

[Entropist]

That makes no sense Ent. To interpret the will of God who is understood to be completely just has to have the aim of ultimate justice. I dealt with it already and you repeated the illogicality.

No, it makes no sense at all, which is precisely my point. Whatever this god does is "moral," including wiping out whole populations and ordering genocide. But anyone else that does it is wrong, because they aren't Yahweh. According to what you're saying, your god gets off the hook because of how you define him, and so therefore he does can only be good. All you have is a syllogism to coldly defend and justify monstrous actions.

I fail to see the distinction between this...



...and this...



...regardless of WHO is giving orders or doing the slaughter, or what the ultimate goal supposedly is. A moral failing of my own, I suppose, eh? According to your logic, the victims of his "wrath" (in the first picture, at any rate) are just broken eggs for omlets to be made ("ultimate justice").

Question, Frodo: Would you be willing to slit the throats of women and children because Joshua commanded you to do so because they claimed their (and your) god said to do so?

[Paul the Human]

An act of evil is already judged to be immoral, and therefore never 'good' in any way. God cannot be evil, so doing evil can never be justified as God inspired.

A couple of posts before saying the above, you said that we cannot judge whether something your god does/causes is good or evil, because we are not all-knowing like god. You said that god cannot be evil -and- if he causes something we interpret as evil... we are wrong.

It seems to me, reading through this thread, that no matter what argument you are presented with, your counter is some variation on the 'god works in mysterious ways' concept. Almost every answer you give boils down to "we can't know the mind of god".

[fr0d0]

Are you a perfect being Ent? If not then yes, I think I could safely say that your morality is inferior to that of God. Apparently you disagree. You, not knowing, judge God to be imperfect.

Read what I said. God never gets off the hook because if God committed evil he would not be God. God can only be just. To establish God's guilt you need to prove where God has been unjust, which of course you cannot.

I would never kill (justly take life). My religious guidance supersedes that of the OT.
I would never murder (unjustly take life) because I know that to be morally wrong.

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if he causes something we interpret as evil... we are wrong.

The bible is written with the precept of a good God. To interpret Gods actions as evil is changing the meaning of the text.

Almost every answer you give boils down to "we can't know the mind of god".

The text is clearly written from the POV that God is acting in accordance with his nature.

It's a point of logic, and not a get out.

[Tiberius]

The thing I think people object to fr0d0, is that we've seen this kind of argument before, but from worldly sources. The German people in World War 2 saw Hitler as a perfect man who could do not wrong, and the people of North Korea see Kim Jon Ill as the same today. It is all very well and good saying "well, X can't do evil because that is against X's character", but if you go down that path, you cannot distinguish between what is good and what is evil, and you start defending certain acts based only on the assumption that X cannot be evil.

What Hitler did was trick people into thinking he was perfect, and the same with Kim Jon Ill. If you have people believing that you can do no wrong, or no evil, then everything you do, nomatter how evil it might appear to anyone who isn't your follower, will be excused and explained away by your followers because they live under the delusional belief that you cannot do evil, and therefore any evil acts you do cannot be evil in the first place.

So what you are left with is the inability to say that God isn't just a supreme Hitler figure; that he does have an evil side, but has convinced his followers to believe that anything he does is good, even if it is evil.

[fr0d0]

We can know that no human is perfect. Rulers given the option by force or coercion impose this belief. Confirming a fault with humans should have no effect on the perception of God. We can judge with hindsight the actions of men and what motivated them. Like I said, using the bible as evidence of evil is corrupting the bible, as it's predicated on a just God.

[Paul the Human]

You are still saying, to put it in a nutshell, that we cannot know the mind of god, which only supports Adrian's argument. And, like most everyone else has said, you cannot use the bible as evidence that the bible is true, regardless of how you personally interpret the bible.

[fr0d0]

Adrian's argument rests on judging God with the failings of humans.
It's not my interpretation. The bible was written from that stance. Your interpretation contradicts the authors intention, which whilst interesting and illuminating, shouldn't influence the original meaning.

[Paul the Human]

I've read it. God is portrayed as cruel, jealous, and vindictive as much if not more often than he is depicted as kind and loving. So... if the authors intentions were to portray god as evil... they succeeded... otherwise... not so much.

[fr0d0]

They failed Paul.... or you did.