Negative aspects of Christianity rarely talked about, even by atheists

[Ravenshire]

Good luck with that, chew toy. 

I challenged you to bring an argument, and your best response was “chew toy.”

You're doing a remarkable job of demonstrating why you belong in the audience rather than the debate. 

I'm not here to ague with you. I've nothing to prove.

I'm here to watch you get worked. And, for the lulz.

[Sheldon]

1) It's pretty hilarious that you don't address the argument at all, label it weak with handwaving, then save the real comedy gold until last by using an ad hominem fallacy, FWIW that is the very definition of a weak argument. 

2) More ad hominem, and a bare claim, tell me again about weak arguments. 

3) Priceless, but if you read it slowly and carefully, you might find that he made no such assumption, and used qualifying statements, and I never claimed everyone's concept of deity was the same. 

4) No indeed, as Epicurus points out in that very quote, a deity could conceivably just be malevolent. for example, the deity depicted in the bible certainly fits that idea. 

5) This weak argument fails to actually address the deity depicted in the bible, and of course fails to understand and therefore address Epicurus's argument, so it also fails as a logical extrapolation of that argument. 

6) I don't believe any deity exists, and Epicurus's argument doesn't address all concept of deities of course. Since you brought your belief here, why don't you properly define the deity you imagine exists first, and then I can address it. In the meantime it is a pretty obvious contradiction to claim a deity is moral, let alone perfectly moral, and is both omniscient and omnipotent, and yet allows, and even causes suffering, to me anyway, but then it without unnecessary suffering as a metric, the word moral pretty much loses all meaning to me.  

7) Epicurus's argument seems to have really triggered you, and it is you who has failed to understand that his conclusions are not absolutes, they are qualified by and follow logically from the preceding concepts of deity. 

Maybe take a deep breath, ease up on the ad hominem, and try understanding what is and more importantly is not being said, before you let your emotions lead your reasoning.

You've written seven points, but your central argument still rests on an assumption you haven't established.

You claim that a perfectly good, all-powerful God permitting suffering is a contradiction.

Yet you've introduced unnecessary suffering as your standard for judging morality.

So how have you established that the suffering God permits is unnecessary?

God can accomplish His purposes even through the evil actions of others. The existence of suffering doesn't automatically establish that God has no good reason to permit it.

You cannot treat what you need to prove as something you've already proven.

Quoting Epicurus doesn't establish your missing premise. Defend it.

The argument is of course Epicurus's, but yes I'd agree it's a contradiction to imagine an entity as "perfectly good" that had the power to prevent suffering, but did not, or even caused unimaginable suffering. 

Obviously if a deity is imagined that is omniscient and omnipotent (see Epicurus's argument), then all suffering would be unnecessary. However even if theodicy tries to rationalise that with omnipotent lite, the deity depicted in the bible is depicted as barbarically cruel and indifferent to suffering, causing it, even on a global scale, torturing a newborn baby to death, endorsing slavery, encouraging ethnic cleansing wars and sex trafficking prisoners etc etc, I don't know what you think perfectly good means, but that is far from I envisage as it is possible to get. 

"God can accomplish His purposes even through the evil actions of others. The existence of suffering doesn't automatically establish that God has no good reason to permit it."

I already answer this above, hypothetically yes, but this would make the deity imagined malevolent and cruel, especially if it is imagined as able to prevent all suffering by will alone (omnipotent). Any human that did this would not be called perfectly good, so the deity imagined falls below a standard of morality we set for evolved apes. 

You still haven't said if anything can happen without or against the will of the deity you believe in? It's key to how culpable this deity you imagine exists would be.

[Sheldon]

1) No it doesn't, read it again more carefully, he qualifies his conclusions, basking "is god...." then draws logical extrapolations that highlight contradictions with other concepts some people hold about deities. 

2) That is one moral viewpoint, it's not one I share of course, but my moral worldview attempts to empathise, if I was malevolent, or barbarically cruel, like the deity depicted in the bible for example, then I might think my own decisions and actions were more important than the suffering and death of humans, again as the deity depicted in the bible clearly does, but it would then be nonsensical to assert that such a deity were perfectly moral or merciful. In fact a deity wishing and causing harm or intense ill will towards others is the very definition of malevolent, as Epicurus points out.  

3) If you mean hypothetically, then yes, but it would still be malevolent to allow suffering one could easily prevent, let alone directly cause it and encourage others to do the same, as the deity depicted in the bible does.  

4) It doesn't necessarily, but then you have misrepresented Epicurus's argument by omitting part of it, characteristics like omniscience and omnipotence for example. Now I don't believe any deity exists, but if it did, and deliberately caused suffering it could easily avoid, or even allowed unnecessary suffering it could easily prevent, then it would be malevolent by definition, and cruelly indifferent to suffering, as of course the deity depicted in the bible is, murdering indiscriminately, even genocidally, endorsing slavery, torturing a newborn baby to death over 7 days, etc etc, to name just a few. 

5) That ad hominem is a bit rich, given you clearly have failed to understand what Epicurus is saying.

You also failed to address my question:

Do you believe anything happens without your god's will? 

If the deity you imagine is real differs to the concepts of deity in Epicurus's argument, then fine, but try explaining how it differs and evidencing your claims, instead of using childish insults.

You're still confusing God's permission of evil with God's approval of evil.

To answer your question: Nothing happens outside God's sovereign knowledge and permission. That doesn't mean everything that happens is something God morally approves of.

God can permit evil actions and accomplish His purposes through them without endorsing those actions. Genesis 50:20 establishes that distinction.

You repeatedly describe suffering as unnecessary, then conclude that God is malevolent for permitting it.

How have you established that God has no morally sufficient reason to permit that suffering?

Calling God malevolent doesn't establish your conclusion. Demonstrate the reasoning behind it.

You previously called me a clown, yet now you're complaining about insults?

You introduced that standard of discourse. Don't suddenly pretend to be offended when it's applied to you.

More importantly, neither your insults nor mine establish whether an argument is sound.

So dispense with the personal commentary and defend your claims.

Step up and let's argue!

So letting evil happen that it doesn't approve of when it could prevent it is not "perfectly good", if a human stood by and did nothing. while a child was raped, we wouldn't call that perfectly good, and that human might not be able to prevent it, so you're imagining a deity with a lower moral standard than a human, and calling it perfectly good?

I listed malevolent acts and intentions several times, just leaf through the bible to see the deity imagined commit infanticide by torturing a newborn baby to death over 7 days, endorsing slavery, and ethnic cleansing wars, and sex trafficking of prisoners, committing indiscriminate murder, even a global genocide. I think perhaps malevolent means something different to you if you're claiming those actions are not malevolent. 

adjective
wishing, having, or showing a desire to cause harm, evil, or pain to others.

I was not aware that I'd called you anything, you may have confused me with another post I quoted, and you then insulted me. 

Since you insist arguments are defended and supported, lets see the best you have for the deity you believe exists, existing outside of the human imagination, as you seem to be putting your pony behind your cart here. Also I will point out any part of any post I choose, and comment as I am minded to.

[Sheldon]

You argue that because God is all-powerful and perfectly good, He must prevent evil.

What makes preventing evil an obligation for God, rather than a choice He has the power to make?

Explain why He must, not merely why He can.

If you claim that god is good, then it is expected that he will do good things.

If you say for some guy standing on a street that he is a good guy, but later on you see kids passing through this street and getting killed without this guy doing anything, although he could have easily saved those kids, then you wouldn't claim that this is a good guy. Same with god.

Not just good but perfectly good, and it follows then would not just do good things, but would not sit by and allow let alone cause unimaginably bad or evil things it could easily prevent. We wouldn't accept this as perfectly good in a human after all. Also the deity imagined here doesn't just allow it to happen, but is depicted in the bible as causing and actively endorsing evil acts that cause suffering.

[Sheldon]

It's not the same, since humans are objectively real, so unless someone can demonstrate that any deity is real then the question is nonsensical. However even as a hypothetical, claiming a deity has moral authority over humans, and can do whatever it wants with them, would effectively be arguing that we are slaves, even if such a deity existed, I'd have no moral obligation to recognise the authority of a slave owner, let alone a barbarically cruel and indifferent slave owner like the one imagined in the bible.

You've equated divine authority with slave ownership, but you've yet to establish why one necessarily entails the other.

Christianity teaches that Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully man. The Creator entered His own creation, took on human nature, experienced suffering, and willingly gave His life for humanity.

How does a God who willingly subjects Himself to suffering and sacrifice for those under His authority fit your definition of a cruel and indifferent slave owner?

And before dismissing that question, remember that we're examining your hypothetical characterisation of the biblical God. 

You speak as though you know the God of the Bible, yet your arguments consist largely of accusations.

What actual knowledge of Scripture are you basing these judgments on?

Are these conclusions you've reached through studying the biblical accounts yourself, or have you simply borrowed accusations and ad hominem attacks from other critics without examining the evidence or context?

You were quick to accuse me of ad hominem reasoning. Now demonstrate that your own accusations are supported by something more substantial than inflammatory language.

Show me the biblical foundation for your claims, and demonstrate that you understand what you're condemning.

Exodus 21 - endorsing slavery. 
The Noah flood myth - an indiscriminate global genocide
Genesis creation myth - curses all humans to suffering in perpetuity, just because two humans ate some fruit it forbade them to eat, but left deliberately in harms way.
Multiple wars of ethnic cleansing that it endorses, along with sex trafficking prisoners
Torturing King David's newborn baby to death in a fit of anger

That the bible contains a story that this deity after cursing all humans, then took ghostly form and raped/ impregnated a teenage girl, to give birth to itself in human form, and had itself tortured in a ghastly show of suffering until it was dead, in order to appease it's own anger over some consumed fruit left in harms way and eaten against it's instructions hardly changes any of that.  

Etc etc etc .....

[Sheldon]

It's not the same, since humans are objectively real, so unless someone can demonstrate that any deity is real then the question is nonsensical. However even as a hypothetical, claiming a deity has moral authority over humans, and can do whatever it wants with them, would effectively be arguing that we are slaves, even if such a deity existed, I'd have no moral obligation to recognise the authority of a slave owner, let alone a barbarically cruel and indifferent slave owner like the one imagined in the bible.

You've equated divine authority with slave ownership, but you've yet to establish why one necessarily entails the other.

Enslave
verb
to hold someone involuntarily, strip them of personal freedom. 

I don't remember being offered any choice, hence this supernatural curse (sin) is involuntary. When I die Christians imagine I'd go to Hell and "pay" for my "sins", I'd have no choice, this idea is enslavement, I'd have no choice but to conform to the diktat of a deity that had involuntarily forced its authority on me, that is the very definition of enslavement.

[Sheldon]

Do you believe anything happens without your god's will? 

Nothing happens outside God's sovereign knowledge and permission. 

Step up and let's argue!

No need, you've just admitted that all suffering happens with, and cannot happen without your deity's permission, you've made my argument for me. It is quite obviously an absurd contradiction to describe such a deity as perfectly good. Though I look forward to you explaining why it is perfectly good to permit (for example) the rape of a child? When by your own admission this could not happen without your deity's permission. 

No human who gave permission for such an act would be described as anything but evil, so evolved apes seem to have a higher moral standard than the deity you have imagined.

good
adjective
having favourable, positive, or superior qualities, or acting as the moral opposite of evil

So allowing a child to be raped, when it could not otherwise be harmed, is perfectly good?

I can only strongly disagree.

[emjay]

I get what you mean, yes, that you experience or remember time in a particular way and in that experience this followed that.  The very idea that something follows logically because it follows temporally, as intuitive and inescapable as it may be in our experience... is a technical description of a logical fallacy.

It doesn't get much more black and white than that, so thanks for that, I appreciate that.  

The crux here, is that not everyone who does mindfulness practice gets the results you have - so it actually isn't like turning your face left or right.  Those benefits don't follow naturally.  They sometimes correlate for some people in some ways.  Sometimes the literal and clinical opposite occurs.  Sometimes nothing occurs.  Somehow...no one really knows how.

But here it's starting to get a bit grey again for me. Can you just clarify, when you say '[...] - so it actually isn't like turning your face left or right. [...]' do you mean:
a) that the 'results' of turning your face left or right, are somehow more reliable and more common, than the results of 'mindfulness', and therefore do 'follow naturally' for turning your face left or right but not for 'mindfulness', or:
b) that turning your face left or right is just as variable in its results across different people, as mindfulness is... that both changing what you see, indirectly, by virtue of changing the direction you physically face, and changing what you focus on within what you see ('mindfulness' applied to vision), or:
c) that even 'seeing' different things as a natural consequence of turning your face left or right, shouldn't be taken for granted in our descriptions of it, because even that, though assumedly common, is not guaranteed to be the same across all individuals.

My response to that is, if you mean:
(a) then I'm still confused, because to me, changing the focus of your attention doesn't seem any less fundamental than the 'choices' you make to change what you see indirectly, by virtue of choosing to move your body physically to change the direction you are facing, or:
(b) or {c) then yes, of course I know that other people have different mental experiences and capacities... that there is much 'neurodiversity' in the world, and at an extreme level I guess nothing can be guaranteed to be the same across all individuals, ie nothing taken for granted across all individuals, with the only difference between (b) and {c) being where you draw that line. And yes, I know it is a flaw of mine to often 'overgeneralise', but at the same time, in practical terms at least, most people do generalise to some extent... talk about 'seeing' for instance, even though there, are, sadly, some blind people who can't. All I can say really on that score, is I'm really sorry if my overgeneralisations, offend people and/or make them feel uncomfortable and/or make them feel misrepresented or excluded etc. All I can do is try to be more, sorry, have to use the word, 'mindful' of that... be more aware of that... keep that more in mind, and not take anything for granted/universally shared in any  talk about the mind.

Mundanity is not the opposite of supernaturality.  A thing is not made more or less supernatural, superstitious..or just "other-than" explicitly scientific or logical by it's mundanity.   Mundane superstition would still be superstitious.  A superstition is, by definition, a pseudo causal claim about mechanics.  Can you see how your self report (all of our self reports) might fall under that category?

Following on from section 2, as it were, yes I can accept that each person's, including of course my own, 'self report' of our own personal mental experience, just represents a different 'strain' of the neurodiversity that covers the whole world. If by 'self report' you do mean what Dan Dennett talked about in one of his books... a way to essentially box/package people's descriptions of their mental experience into a way that it could be objectively analysed as data, but at the same time, giving it all due respect to the people making those testimonials. I did appreciate that idea from Dennett, though I never got too much into his books, bit too complicated for me, but that idea of packaging/boxing personal testimonials, in a respectful, but also objectified way for the sake of data analysis, was pretty cool I thought. So yeah, I perfectly happily accept that my 'self report' is just one of many idiosyncratic and neurally diverse 'self reports' of the nature of conscious experience, and in that sense whatever I consider 'mundane' is not necessarily or even necessarily probably, the same for many or any of the other self reports by others. So, in other words, I accept what you're saying, or what I think you're saying, that not even 'mundane' can be taken for granted across individuals... that all it really describes is what one subject/perspective considers simple/trivial, not all or at least not all necessarily.

***

As an aside, I do have another interesting (IMO) testimonial to add; that idea of personifying pain I was talking about, is turning out to be surprisingly effective, for me. At the end of the day, in a quest to find something stable/reliable in life, why has it taken me so long to realise that perhaps the most reliable thing in life is pain itself? and loss. And that instead of fighting it, we could try to befriend it. I mean, the Buddhist idea of equanimity already approaches that sort of idea, but this takes equanimity a step further, more than just acceptance, but to actual friendship/welcome. ChatGPT gave me a name for my pain, 'Algos', apparently a/the ancient Greek word for pain or distress, and referring to it almost as a person... ie when pain arises, saying essentially, 'Algos has woken up', is actually working really well, and in my opinion, and in my personal perspective, reducing the impact of pain and loss for me. So yeah, say hello to Algos, he's asleep right now but he might wake up later , like he has been doing more lately. The characterisation of it is going to be an ongoing process, but the effect in my own little boxed/packaged testimonial, is that it's really helping for me, and feels very promising for going forward. Likewise for loss... the thought of not just seeking to accept loss, but also to welcome it and/or befriend it. So on that score, it brought about a massive wish to declutter... like for instance I have a wardrobe full of clothes, that I kept thinking one day I'd grow back into them, but in however many years since I quit smoking, I have never got my weight back down that low again. Now I'm perfectly happy with the idea just to declutter it all, same with loads of books and all sorts.... that's my plan for the day, and days to come. Some of it is perfectly practical... it's not like we really need many reference books anymore with AI all over the place to answer any question at the click of a button So anyway, yeah, this whole discussion has all been very insightful for me... or at least led to different insights... good or bad, who knows yet?...but a nice interesting new direction to explore, so thanks for that, and sorry about my overgeneralisations... I'll try and do better going forward on that score

[The Grand Nudger]

Sense A. Turning our heads left and right produces a -far- more reliable result than mindfulness practices.

We turn our heads left, we see the left 180. We turn our heads right, we see the right 180.

We do mindfulness…and maybe some range of things happens for some people some of the time. Maybe nothing happens. Maybe the opposite set of thing to the first set of things happens to some people or even the same set of people at a different time from set one. There’s a pretty wide gulf between anxiety relief and deepening psychosis.

I think it’s intuitive to visualize attention, ofc. We feel like the inner observer so we imagine/describe it that way but Ibthink we also know we’re not actually looking in our brains. In fact we have no way of doing so…and it’s wonderful demonstration of the phenomena. Where a thing that is experientially mundane is not physically possible and demonstrably not happening. Not only do we lack the structural apparatus to see inside our minds we like any central processing center to have such an experience true-to-detail. Our strong belief that we’re doing it is nothing less than supernatural, superstitious…etc. IMO it’s actually the source of all such beliefs. I don’t think it’s coincidental that we imagine animals, rivers, mountains, the wind…..even the universe itself…as a personal being…”like us”. Our that we/you find utility in thinking about pain or any other human experience that way.

It’s an atheist forum…so there’s the obligatory mention of just how much trouble that gets us into as well.

[emjay]

Sense A.  Turning our heads left and right produces a -far- more reliable result than mindfulness practices.

We turn our heads left, we see the left 180.  We turn our heads right, we see the right 180.  

We do mindfulness…and maybe some range of things happens for some people some of the time.  Maybe nothing happens.  Maybe the opposite set of thing to the first set of things happens to some people or even the same set of people at a different time from set one.  There’s a pretty wide gulf between anxiety relief and deepening psychosis.

I think it’s intuitive to visualize attention, ofc.  We feel like the inner observer so we imagine/describe it that way but Ibthink we also know we’re not actually looking in our brains.  In fact we have no way of doing so…and it’s wonderful demonstration of the phenomena.  Where a thing that is experientially mundane is not physically possible and demonstrably not happening.   Not only do we lack the structural apparatus to see inside our minds we like any central processing center to have such an experience true-to-detail.   Our strong belief that we’re doing it is nothing less than supernatural, superstitious…etc.  IMO it’s actually the source of all such beliefs.  I don’t think it’s coincidental that we imagine animals, rivers, mountains, the wind…..even the universe itself…as a personal being…”like us”.  Our that we/you find utility in thinking about pain or any other human experience that way.  

It’s an atheist forum…so there’s the obligatory mention of just how much trouble that gets us into as well.

I still think we're talking past each other... perhaps in the same sort of way we do when we talk about the question of free will; we both come to the same conclusion about that... that there is no free will... but we come to that conclusion for very different reasons, and looking at the question and/or even the definition of free will in very different ways, and at very different levels/scopes of analysis. Perhaps because ultimately I'm a reductionist, so that is the level of description I feel most comfortable working, but you and most others work at a higher level... and it seems to me the same sort of thing may well be happening here, so we're just going to keep going round in circles if we keep talking about it. Thanks for your input, seriously... I do appreciate it and it is interesting, in it's own right if nothing else, but just like the free will debate, I can see when it's pointless to keep talking past each other, with people on the opposite side of the argument I mean, because we're talking at different levels of description. So yeah, thanks, but that's enough for me. All the best to you But that's enough of this discussion for me I think.