Willravel

Yes, that would make god a hypocrite. Maybe that can be the last line of our revised riddle.
Do you have the power to save all of them?
Apathy could be implied in malevolence.
Maybe you should list all the common definitions of god, from most common to least common. I mean, I listed the Bible verses.

Redjake

So when the cows come home, really the only way to answer the tough questions I have asked is because of "faith."

"Faith" is just that - faith. There's no evidence. Faith is really just intense hope.

So to sum up, you are worshiping a deity that kills those who worship him, lets other religions exist for the sole purpose of making us choose, sits back and watches natural disasters occur that wipe out entire regions, refuses to show tangible evidence of his own existence, has scientific evidence that conflicts with the word of his bible, only because of "faith?"

I'll pitch an idea: the reason evolution isn't mentioned in the Bible is because when the Bible was written, by humans, they didn't know at the time what evolution was, because they were primitive. Simple as that.

When people say "don't take it so literally!!!! everything in the Bible isn't meant to be a literal translation!!!!", that screams to me "oh shit, the stuff in the Bible can't fool or convince humans anymore because we have become too advanced to believe it, let's just say it was a "guideline" on how to live and worship"

__________________
Off the record, on the q.t., and very hush-hush.

n0nsensical

theres a big difference between belief in God and belief in the Bible, though granted, much of organized Christianity and many of the sheep herded by it are dependent on them being the same.

__________________
"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." --Abraham Lincoln

Willravel

nOnsensivcal brings up an interesting point. Maybe I should lay out the labels:

Following a scripture literally:_____fundamentalist
Following a scripture:____________religious
Not following a scripture:_________spiritual
God is everything in the universe:___pantheistic
I don't know:____________________agnostic
I don't care:_____________________apathetic
There almost certainly isn't a god:__weak atheist
There is no god:_________________strong atheist

Ustwo

there almost certainly isn't a god - atheist
There is no god: fundamentalist

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Baraka_Guru

Agreed.

EDIT:
I hope no one missed this. This is important for some of what's being discussed here.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

filtherton

As long as we can agree that Epicurus is irrelevant.

No, but that's not the point. I have the power to do more than I am doing, and I am not doing it. This doesn't make me apathetic, apathy implies that I don't care at all, and I do care.

But apathy doesn't equal malevolence. If you take malevolence to mean the willful infliction of pain and/or suffering then apathy, being the state of not caring, has nothing to do with it.

You listed a handful of bible verses. That's not that difficult. Listing definitions of god is a little bit more dicey since I'm fairly certain a lot more goes into the process of defining god than choice bible quotations (though there's probably some of that, too). If you're really curious you should ask people who actually believe in god how they feel about Epicurus, preferably someone with some sort of theological education. They could tell you better than I. Maybe that's not fair. Life isn't; perhaps that is some sign of a malevolent god...

All I'm saying is that there is more than one way to define a god, and that relying on definitions which aren't necessarily universal to support arguments about the inconsistency of those definitions isn't necessary that interesting or meaningful.

Willravel

Epicurus is only irrelevant if all logic is irrelevant.
It absolutely is the point as to why your analogy doesn't fit. God being considered omnipotent is a key part of the riddle. If you can do anything, ANYTHING, then what keeps one from preventing suffering and destruction? Apathy or ill will.
Yes, Epicurus skipped apathy, but it's clearly implied. The point of mentioning malevolence is about proving that god isn't the ultimate force for good people think him to be. "Why would one worship a malevolent god?" can be translated also to " why would one worship an apathetic god?" The effect is the same.
How about the top 5 definitions of god?

I asked my dad about Epicurus yesterday and he gave me the "We aren't meant to understand" kind of response. I suspect that's the only way to explain it away, and it's a cop-out.
There's more than one way, but there are limits.

Supernatural. Creator. Good. These fit basically all modern incarnations of the one god or head of many gods. Aside from pantheists (which really aren't talking about religion, but rather philosophy), that covers pretty much everyone. It covers all Hindus, Jews, Christians, Baha'is, and Muslims right off the bat. That's almost everyone.

Jenna

I'm a little late to the thread but...

I think your category fits more towards agnostics. Atheists believe there is no God. There's no possibility of a God. None what-so-ever. The agnostic category is more broad - one kind is the "it can't be proven either way, so there's many possibilities." I think that's who this should be aimed towards. In which, I cannot answer fully because I'm an atheist and I don't think there is possibilities for infinite Gods. I don't believe there are any God(s). Period.

Martian

If you're going to make the distinction between a weak and strong atheist, you should probably make the distinction between a weak and a strong agnostic.

I think the difference between an atheist and an agnostic is often misunderstood. A weak atheist may allow room for doubt without being an agnostic; it's all about approach. Those of us who have decided to sit on the fence have a habit of acknowledging all belief systems (including atheism) as equally valid.

The difference between a strong agnostic and a weak agnostic could be likened to the difference between weak and strong atheists. A weak agnostic says 'I don't know, but I may some day find out.' A strong agnostic says 'I am incapable of knowing.' This is a position that is separate and distinct from that of an athiest, who says 'I know that there is no God.'

The flaw in the Epicurus argument is that it assumes that a higher power thinks of right and wrong in the same way we do. I understand that this is supported (created man in His own image and all that), but the problem is that if God truly is omniscient than he has access to knowledge that we never will. This is why the 'we aren't meant to understand' argument does have merit; it's a gentler way of saying 'we are ignorant peons.'

Asaris' point as highlighted by Baraka_Guru is also significant. If God doesn't allow for evil or suffering, free will is effectively negated.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

filtherton

This.

filtherton

You're welcome to think that, but that doesn't make it true. Epicurus argument is essentially this:

Bad things happen, so god can't be both good and all powerful.

The definition of all powerful is pretty straightforward.

The definition of good? Not so much. Different people have different definitions of good, and even if you were to narrow it down to one specific definition, isn't good only really defined when juxtaposed with bad? If god is good, and good can only exist in contrast to bad, must an existence which has goodness also have badness?

Wouldn't a perfectly ideal world, one where Epicurus could believe in god, cease to be good? Maybe an existence where the word "good" has meaning is better than an existence where it doesn't. I don't know, Epicurus seems a little half-baked to me.

Epicurus's statement is logically valid, in that it takes a simple premise to its conclusion, but it's simplicity also means it doesn't apply all that well when simplicity isn't assumed from the get-go.

Well, there could be things that you don't understand going on with respect to the deity's interactions with humanity. The fact that this is an explanation you don't want to hear doesn't mean that it fails as an explanation.

All Epicurus does is point out that it is logically inconsistent to define a god in the way that he defines it. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with asking why one would worship a malevolent god since it doesn't take a very astute student of human behavior to understand why people might worship malevolent authority figures. Perhaps there are explanations that went with it when he wrote it that describe his intentions, if you have them, send me a link, I am genuinely curious.

In any case, the idea that god isn't an absolute force of good isn't exactly revelatory: I know of at least one good sized christian denomination that believes miscarried children go to hell, which isn't the type of thing you can really believe at the same time that you believe that god never lets anything bad happen.

1. God
a. A being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions.
b. The force, effect, or a manifestation or aspect of this being.
2. A being of supernatural powers or attributes, believed in and worshiped by a people, especially a male deity thought to control some part of nature or reality.
3. An image of a supernatural being; an idol.
4. One that is worshiped, idealized, or followed: Money was their god.
5. A very handsome man.
6. A powerful ruler or despot.

There's six. I don't see anything about goodness, apathy, or malevolence.

I could see how you would think that it's a cop out. That doesn't mean it isn't a valid explanation. Were you expecting a peer reviewed study?

The more you know about these groups, the less similar they appear.

Ustwo

To me this is a more sophisticated version of my old line 'God is a small invisible fish that lives in my anus which can't be detected by any means'. Saying we are too stupid to figure out Gods version of right and wrong is unprovable, and futile to discuss.

My response would be, if we can not understand right and wrong, then we can not do right or wrong. We are but infants to his divine majesty. Sin, punishment, etc all go out the window the same way they do for a 2 year old child.

The response to that is the 'well its wrong for YOU but its right for a god', which reminds me of a famous Ghost Busters line, "When someone asks if you're a god you say YES!" I only have my logic to go on, but if its wrong for me to allow an innocent to be harmed yet perfectly dandy for a God, that makes said god something of an asshole.

So the point of free will is to free up gods day planner? Pedophiles to pancreatic cancer explained away as free will needs meaning? This to me is sophistry to find a place for god that doesn't seem to need it. A god that in effect serves no function beyond builder, a theist of the old ilk, once reviled by religious men and now happily lumped with them by the same types in a growing agnostic western world.

And lets not get into the idea of predetermination, well ok lets. How can god be all everything and not know how I would react? My free will is a product of education, instinct, and experience. TFPers know me well enough that if someone posts how raising taxes is good for the economy, I'm going to call them mentally defective in some way. This is just tfpers who don't know much about me beyond what I've written here. God should know how I react to every scenario as free will or not, I'm not going to be changing that like some random number generator. If he/it/she/they are the alpha and the omega, they know what I'm going to do when, and for what. I might change my mind, but god should have known I would change it before I knew I was.

So we seem to dismiss the God of most of the world, the all knowing, all doing, all seeing, all this, and turn God into some weak feel good spirit thats watching over all but doing absolutely nothing worth mentioning, at least not to our puny intelligence.

The whole need for god evaporates and god just becomes an addition to make us feel better about our own ignorance and mortality.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

asaris

1. Re Martian's point: I don't think God's 'version' of right and wrong is substantially different from ours. The difference between God's ethics and my ethics is like the difference between the mathematics of a PhD and my mathematics, not like the difference between mathematics and english.

In this vein, the flaw in the argument from evil is not that God's good and evil are different from ours. The problem is that it is possible to be good and still allow some evil if it is for a greater good. And it is possible that a god would allow the evil in this world for the greater good of free will. Therefore, the existence of evil does not disprove the existence of God. And this counter-argument is why few, if any, contemporary philosophers of religion advance the old argument any more. Most argue that the existence of evil makes God's existence very unlikely.

This might make sense except for the fact that the Bible has been taken as non-literal for thousands of years. The idea that the Bible is non-literal has nothing to do with scientific advancement.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Willravel

Based on this, you think that every "evil" that happens serves a greater good? While I recognize that it's possible for an evil to serve a greater good, that hardly means all evil does. Epicurus still seems to stand.

Martian

Naturally. Religion is based on faith. That's sort of the point. The invisible birthday cake argument (or your more colourful metaphor, the invisible anus fish) is a way of encapsulating that axiomatic. Trying to apply a purely rational approach to something that is not based on reason returns bad results.

Note that when I say this it's not to say that anyone who ascribes to a religion of some sort is irrational, just that faith is. It isn't based on reason or logic, which is what makes it faith.

Well, yes, but this is why your two year old is given rules and discipline. God has set out a form of rules and discipline for his followers, so that they can't claim this sort of ignorance.

I don't think anyone has ever said that God has any interest in being your best friend or your babysitter. We all have choices to make and we all deal with the consequences of those choices. This is true regardless of what if any religion you follow. The simplest answer given by Christianity here (insofar as there is one) is that God wants us to love Him for Himself and not for what He can do for us. There's actually a bit more to the story than that, but for the purposes of our discussion I think this suffices; if we get too much more involved in the dogma I'm going to have to refer you to a theological scholar anyway. It's not my religion and I don't know all of the fine details.

The bottom line is that we're all responsible for finding our own answers. Further to that it's been my experience that you can find assholes in any faith. I don't care what you or anyone else believes. The only thing that gets on my nerves is when people try to force their own beliefs on others and atheists are often the worst offenders for this. Religion isn't any better or worse than the people involved and really there isn't a whole lot more evidence behind atheism than there is behind anything else. If you want to be an atheist I say more power to you, but why is it so important that you try to prove everyone else wrong?

Assuming that we're going to leave moral relativism out of the argument for the time being, I should think this would go without saying. If we accept that good and evil are absolute concepts then we can accept that two beings would interpret them more or less the same way. Within the context of Christianity, good and evil are clearly defined, so we must assume that God would have a more advanced understanding of what are the same concepts we know. And really, if we accept God as being omniscient then it's pretty clear cut; one follows the other.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

Willravel

This is the ultimate point to Epicurus' riddle. Don't try to pretend that faith or religion is about logic, reason, or science. It's not. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but it's the reality.

Every time I see a religious ontological argument or religious science, I get pissed. It's be like trying to discover the secrets of literature in a math classroom. It just doesn't work. So cut it out.

roachboy

the "ontological proof" goes: the god is is a tautology.

what's to be pissed about?

o and epicurus also said that if multiple explanations obtain for the same phenomenon, keep all of them.

just saying.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

asaris

The Epicurus argument seems to me to be arguing that the existence of evil logically contradicts the existence of God. The possibility that there is a greater good is all a theist needs to disprove this argument.

As far as my own opinion, I don't know I'd say that every evil serves a greater good. I think my first answer would be simply that I don't know. My second answer would be it is the possibility of evil (especially the evil involved in human action) which serves the greater good of free will, not necessarily each individual evil. For example, the murder of a child may not result directly in a greater good, but the free will which creates the possibility of this does. My third answer is that God works with our bad choices and natural disasters to create good out of them, even if things would have been better had we made better choices.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

roachboy

the main point of epicurus's claim regarding gods and eveil is that maybe there are gods maybe there aren't but if there are gods, they aren't terribly concerned with what happens here and certainly don't devise punishments in the afterlife for anyone, so functionally we're on our own. and don't worry so much about the afterlife.

you could just as easily say that epicurus is arguing for transcendent gods as none. if you want to keep the anachronism follies going, you could just as easily say that epicurus is a nominalist as an atheist (anachronism because, as filtherton said more or less, the arguments are directed at theists in the judeo-xtian sense--athens, 2nd century bc i think, maybe 3rd, can't remember)

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Baraka_Guru

By whatever and by however many predicates we may think a thing — even if we completely determine it — we do not make the least addition to the thing when we further declare that this thing is. ... If we think in a thing every feature of reality except one, the missing reality is not added by my saying that this defective thing exists.

—Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B628

Don't get pissed. Use reason over emotion.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Willravel

Here's why:
This is the supposition of an idiot. Ontological arguments are really quite intriguing until you run into things like this. Even if #2 was true, which it's not, using terminology like "great" makes god's state relative to say the least. It becomes subjective.

Using this as a proof of some kind is fallacious. Why isn't this argument on VH1's Dumbest Philosopher Quotes? That's simple. Some people actually agree with it. Some very bright people actually agree with it.

The same is true of intelligent design. It's a phage that ravages people's perceptions, be they stupid or smart.

roachboy

actually, will, the ontological proof has a couple problems, but being stupid ain't one of them. the basic one is that the proof is itself circular--anselm is a realist and the realist frame presupposes that concepts exist in gods mind--its a kind of platonism--so within that frame, to say "god is" is to use the category of being--the category being already exists in god's mind--so the statement is one in which the predicate is literally contained in the subject. so its a tautology.

this is not an unusual problem with demonstrating axioms.
again, you can't demonstrate axioms from within a proof that presupposes them.


and at least anselm was up front about the tautological character of the demonstration.
the proof is compelling or not depending on your relation to the framework, to realism in that mideval sense.
that you are not a realist in that sense means that for you the proof is meaningless--to some extent, this is a simple historical matter and not a particularly logical one--anselm was writing from a particular context--aquinas from a particular context--ockham (who i like better) from a particular context--11th century christianity, which took itself as monopolizing the terms of debate on questions like this.

so there are problems, but being stupid ain't one of them.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Willravel

Stupid would mean, "Why can't he see that what he's saying is so flawed?".

Anselm of Canterbury (best known for creating the Canterbury Cream Egg) wasn't stupid. As a matter of fact, in addition to being a well known philosopher he was an anti-war protester.

Ustwo

Well one out of two isn't bad I guess.

Mmmmmm cream eggs.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

filtherton

I hope you can see the glaring similarities between your criticism of Anselm and my criticisms of Epicurus.

pig

So what in the fuck is so great about free will? If you didn't have free will, would you be free to know you didn't have it? Do we have it? Do we know? I'll trade shitting myself in bliss for free will any day of the week.

Back to Epicurious and Ansalem gentlemen! Onwards and upwards!

__________________
You don't love me, you just love my piggy style

Willravel

Epicurus is 100% correct, but slightly vague. Anselm said, in no uncertain terms, that if something is "greater than anything that can be imagined" it's automatically real. Which is why I used the word "stupid" several times.

asaris

So it's better to be a pig satisfied than Socrates dissatisfied?

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

pig

well, I think the "satisfaction" part of that kind of answers itself. yes, I'd rather be satisfied. If millions of people weren't starving the whole world through, and I had no free will to be discontent with the "holy shit my world is so jolly, something must be fucked up" angle...I think on the whole I'd go for that.

I'm guessing this cat would agree with me:

understood master phil, i think i've found a substitute for my point:

__________________
You don't love me, you just love my piggy style

filtherton

They are both correct if viewed without any context. That's the thing about arguments when viewed as purely logical things; reality is unimportant. Logical validity exists independently of actual, tangible validity. The logical validity of either perspective isn't the only important aspect. Epicurus may be logically valid, but it doesn't necessarily apply, despite any efforts by you to interpret its "vagueness" with respect to the definition of malevolence. Anselm may also be logically valid, but since the idea that if something is "greater than anything that can be imagined" it's automatically real doesn't seem to be borne out in reality, Anselm doesn't necessarily apply either.

The fact that neither is necessarily representative of reality doesn't mean that they're useless, it just means that they are only good for what they are good for.

Willravel

I don't think it's fair to compare them, really. The only similarities between them are god and logic.

filtherton

That and they both are woefully inadequate when it comes to saying anything meaningful about the nature of any deity who isn't defined in very specific ways.

I know what Epicurus is trying to say: if god is good and can do anything he wants, how come bad shit happens? It just seems like a rather elementary question, which fails to take into account any sort complexity with respect to ideas of what constitutes "good". I think anyone who actually believed in god and had a critical mind would use Epicurus as a starting point for refining what their god meant to them. I understand why you'd view it as a period (the punctuation point, that is), though.

Say there was an all powerful god, and this god was good, and this god ended all that was bad, so that there was only good. What would that mean? Can good exist without bad? Maybe a "good" god can't end "bad" because without "bad" there would be no "good" and if there were no "good" there could be no "good" gods? Maybe it's a matter of self preservation. I don't know. You don't have to be a writer for Lost to be able to contrive reasons for forces of good to allow bad things to happen. On the same subject, whoa, have you ever just, looked at your hand, man? Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude.

pig

To me, it's more interesting, or perhaps more important, to decide for oneself whether you are willing to be a proponent of a god/deity that you can't fathom, or whether you are willing to stand on your own paltry understanding of ethics and reality. Sure, perhaps there is a great god fellow whose operation is on a level that is beyond mine. I would assume that this god person would understand that I can't understand his motivations, and therefore that my rejection of his devine awesomeness is based on my paltry understanding. Does one make the best choices based on what one thinks one does know, or does one posit that a greater knowledge must exist, and that a greater god exists which encompasses this greater knowledge. I find this latter concept to be useless and absurd. Thus, within my small understanding and knowledge, I find that either the God concept is utterly irrational and useless, or that I can not support said God. Either way, it puts me firmly outside the "Ra Ra Go God Go God" section. Which is all I'm really concerned about.

__________________
You don't love me, you just love my piggy style

filtherton

I feel like there's some sort of pig resurgence going on here. I like it.

On a non-Epicurus related tangent, the idea of god doesn't seem all that useful to me beyond some sort of abstract personification of the way things seem to happen. I'm fairly certain I could never worship a god, but I can also see how worshiping god could be useful and rational for a person who happened to find the evidence compelling.

I think I know what you're saying, pig. You don't find the evidence compelling and you wouldn't worship a god whose rule is reflected in the present state of affairs of the world?

Willravel

You can't call one's understanding of ethics and reality paltry relative to god when god's ethics and existence are in question. It's like saying "You don't understand as much as god" when you have no idea what god, if he exists, understands.

It's circular.

filtherton

Think of it as an extreme form of cultural relativism.

Willravel

God has a culture? Doesn't that suggest polytheism? IS THE TRIUNE POLYTHEISM?!

*confused*

pig

Well, will: I can say that I'm fairly certain that I don't know everything, and thus it's quite probable that my own knowledge of everything that is or ever will be is pretty paltry and craptastic. I can sort of live with that. I've got what I've got, and that's all I've got, and upon this I'll make the best decisions I can.

I agree that you can't qualify anything about how great this god's supposed grasp on things could be/must be, because it is - by definition - unqualifiable. So it's utterly useless to me.

filthy: you pretty much nailed it. Maybe there is some great "holy fuck - now it all makes sense" bit of knowledge out there that would just really tie this whole room together, like a good carpet. But as it stands, based on what I know - I don't find the evidence compelling, and it really seems that I'd take the "no one is suffering, and we don't have this notion of free will...which we wouldn't be free to recognize we didn't have...and so maybe we would think we were free...but everyone was adequately fed and free of murder and rape and such" option over "free will must be there for god to show me he loves me. so i'm pretty ok over here in the us of a, but a lot of people are grandiosely fucked" option.

ultimately, i'm at the point that the whole god bit just doesn't fascinate as much as it once did. the diamond has lost it's twinkle.

i'm not sure how this tracks back to whatever the op is, but i'm not reacting to the op any longer, only to the discussion that is unfolding.

it's good to see you as well - i find that my interest in these boards waxes and wanes. i love the community - personified by many posting in this thread - but in general i'm about at my "i'm not sure if this girl likes me" / "does reverend wright really want to fuck my baby in the face and why does he make so much money" limit.

This is America - Love it or leave it you commie pinko punk!

__________________
You don't love me, you just love my piggy style

roachboy

god's ethics? if you think about xtian theology for a second, and link it back to what asaris said earlier about free will, it'd kinda follow that all the ethical problems that will derives from epicurus (who wasn't talking about this in the way you think, but rather was talking about the idea of a god who would judge you after you died or an afterlife) can be resolved pretty easily--the ethical decision would have to have been free will. everything follows from it. if there is an omnipotent god, she could just as easily made us all meat puppets as not. we could have no agency at all and everything presumably would be hunky dory--but that aint the case, that that it can't be the case is the point of all those stories of the Fall.

so in a sense, free will is only possible if we are fucked.
augustine gets pretty worked up about this in city of god, but mostly because he thinks that jesus gets us off the hook for the consequences of free will--but he can't reverse the fact of free will, so we're still fucked. but we can choose, the story goes, not to be fucked--which is, i suppose, the only consistent story one can have if you start from a premise of an omnipotent god and want to work in some element of free will for us meat puppets.

but within this framework, everything is ethically consistent insofar as free will is among the highest values. what folk do with that free will is secondary, really. but according to this particular fable, you can't make the claim that because bad things happen that god is x or y. to try it is to negate free will.

if this god character does not exist, then we are responsible for the evil in the world and there's no point whining about it all being the fault of some god, or proof of anything except that alot of people are selfish and stupid in general, and within that set alot of people are selfish stupid and armed and that's not good. but it's the fault of the selfish stupid and armed people, what happens.

personally, i don't know or care if there is a god character operating on some logical level far beyond the limits of finite understanding---if it's the case, it doesn't matter, and if it's not the case, everything is the same as it already is.

i don't think pascal was saying anything when he tried to lay this case out and say that you had to choose to believe or not believe anyway, even though you cannot know anything at all---so figure the odds, place your bet and then pretend that you believe because if you pretend long enough you'll become stupider and stupider and eventually will forget that you don't believe.
the part i don't think says anything is the part about having to choose.
i think he was right about people making themselves stupider by performing rituals that assume they're stupid long enough and that eventually they'll forget they aren't stupid.

maybe in an oblique way that's the underlying problem, not whether there is or is not some god.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite