Baraka_Guru

Because so does free will.

We are not slaves to God; we are merely slaves to the consequences of our actions and the actions of others--this is the challenge of free will: figuring out how to deal with the law of causation in the universe as spirits free to choose what we will.

__________________
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

Evil doesn't exist. There's destructive, there's immoral, there's unethical, and there's selfish.

filtherton

I think if Epicurus could appreciate the diversity present in theistic notions of what god is he would have kept his mouth shut.

Willravel

How many religions do you think existed in or around Greece at 340BC? I mean there are really only like 5 main religions now. 3, if you want to be totally honest.

There's a reason that his statement has withstood the test of time. He was 100% spot on.

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?

This is a wonderful example of applying logic to the concepts present in religion.

filtherton

I don't know how many religions existed in or around Greece at 340BC. It isn't all that relevant to what I said. Presently there are over 1500 different denominations of Christianity alone. Perhaps Epicurus' mistake was lacking the foresight to see that more diverse perspectives would arise (or already existed).

In any case, his assumptions about the nature of god aren't necessarily reflected across the whole of theism. An omnipotent being might have a slightly different concept of benevolence than humanity.

I agree about it being a good example of applying logic to religious concepts. Maybe Epicurus' problems more stem from the lack of awareness of the people who quote him...

Willravel

There is a reason that the word "religion" is not the same as "denomination". Most denominations are the same. All of the sermons in my father's Lutheran Church could be told in a Methodist church, Baptist church, Episcopal, Evangelical, etc. If you put the word "Pope" in now and again, they could even be preached in Catholic churches. They all read the same book, and even interpret 99.9% of the book the same. That's not diversity; it's stubbornness.
They don't apply to non-deistic religion, like Buddhism, but they apply to Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. That's about 70% of the population of the planet. And 14% are atheistic or non-religious. So let's examine the 15% left: Buddhists (covered them), Sikhs (probably not covered by Epicurus), Baha'is (monotheistic, in basically the same boat as Islam)... you see where I'm going with this.

Epicurus's wonderful feat of logic doesn't apply to, well, about 6% of the Earth's population. That's about 360,000,000. Of course, you have to then ask yourself whether Buddhism is a religion or philosophy, so it could be less than 1%.

guyy

Oh but you know, "it's a test", or "god works in mysterious ways, ways that exceed the comprehension of your puny human mind", or "your concept of deity & religion is too bound up in mediterranean monotheism."

If logic is a problem, polytheist, atheistic, or animist religions might be good choices. At least there is no problem of theodicy -- can't promise you that there wouldn't be any other deal-killers. In the end, even if you want to hold on to a religious attitude, there really isn't any logical need for deity (see Buddhism, Taoism, nature cults...)

Redjake

I'm fully aware that not all religions consider their god to follow the rules I quoted, and I'm also aware that some religions don't even have a deity, but it is undeniable that a large percentage of religions believe their central deity/god follows the rules that I quoted - so can someone that believes in that type of god @ TFP please explain why their god/God chooses to mass murder 250,000 innocent people? And please explain it without the "it is a higher understanding that we cannot comprehend" or "it was meant to be" or "He has a plan" arguments.

Maybe it will help me understand how some people have absolute faith in a God?

Also, while you're at it, please explain to me why people who devote their entire lives to God get murdered in their homes? Just happened a couple of months ago here in the Raleigh area - a bishop was murdered in his home, after 50-60 years of good, solid service. God is a fucking bitch if he does exist - that is just cruel. His family is suffering, and I don't even want to think of the sick shit that went through this man's head as he was being murdered.

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

guyy

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it."






You might find the immediate context interesting. Here's the link: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...ses/theses.htm

filtherton

A lot of them are probably very similar, but I don't know if you can credibly claim that they're the same. I've heard sermons from different denominations, mostly at funerals, and you're wrong if you think they're the same in every denomination.

No, they don't. They only apply to lazy oversimplifications of the religions you mention. Generally, it is prudent only to apply logical frameworks to situations which share the same assumptions.

It's not that wonderful...

Willravel

I didn't say the sermons were all the same. I specifically mentioned my father's sermons as being unintentionally interdenominationaly applicable.
So, according to you, the Jews, Christians, and Muslims who believe that god is omniscient have lazy beliefs?

Torah: Genesis 17:1, Job 42:2, Jeremiah 32:17,27
New Testament: Matthew 19:26, Luke 1:37, Revelation 19:6
Qur'an: Every time Allah is called: The Mighty (Al Aziz) or The Most Strong (Al Qawi) (I lent out my Qur'an).

It's kinda clear. No assumptions.

filtherton

I guess I'm just confused as to why you brought it up. You said that most denominations were the same, and then immediately afterward you mentioned that your father's sermons could have been given in any church. Were these two statements unrelated?

Were you saying that most denominations would suffer through the same sermon without a problem if the sermon were sufficiently vague? I could see that. It doesn't mean that most denominations are the same, it just means they use the same references.

When I spoke of laziness I was referring to the kind of intellectual vigor that results in a person presuming that a few select holy book quotations can be used to effectively understand how the vast majority of theists view their god.

How about benevolence? Do you have any verses where god claims that he's never going to let anyone suffer?

Willravel

Not at all. The point was that the subtle differences are so small that they've failed to come up in the last 15 years of my dad's sermons.
This represents a rather odd window where a person completely trusts an ancient book of myths, so much so as to believe in the supernatural without question, but also is skeptical enough to not take the book at face value?

Omnipotence is WIDELY accepted across all Abrahamic faiths.
You mean malevolence, right?

filtherton

Why would they come up in your dad's sermons? Does he go around preaching vaguely nondenominational sermons? Do you go to your dad's church every Sunday? Were you there when he blamed the U.S. government for AIDS ?

Seems kind of odd, doesn't it.

It probably is. That doesn't mean that its significance to different sects of different faiths can be accurately determined from selective holy book quotation. We all know that theists generally presume god to be omnipotent. What that actually means probably depends on who you ask.

Sure, if that works for you. Find me a bible verse where god claims that suffering isn't part of being human.

Willravel

He doesn't intend them to be interdenominational. That's the point. Actually, most of the Lutheran and Methodist sermons I've seen are unintentionally interdenominational (say that 6 times fast!). I don't go to church at all, but my dad's sermons are available online, and I usually read them.

Maybe we can perform an experiment. Attend different protestant and catholic churches over the next few weeks and write down everything that's not interdenominationally applicable in the sermons. I think you'll find, as I have, that most sermons take some text, from the Bible and then simply weave a broad moral tale about it.

If you really want to test it, attend a few temples and mosques. I've only been to a few of each myself, but even they are surprisingly consistent.
"All powerful". It means all powerful. It's a simple definition that's provided in Sunday School classrooms all around the world.
That's not relevant to Ep's logical symphony. He has the power and does nothing, or he doesn't have the power and isn't god.

catback

As with all religious debates this thread will never end.

It is my religious belief that everyone and everything is wrong and it accounts for everything so it must be right. If I was wrong in this theory then various religions wouldn't have different "interpretations" of events, the number of different faiths would be far fewer, and there wouldn't be conflicting statements about god. The fact that religion as a whole is such a mess and not "fixed" is that people have played with it and perhaps even conjured it up--in either case it is far from something handed down from a supreme being or creator.

filtherton

So just to be clear, this has nothing to do with how all denominations are pretty much the same?

We all know what it means according to the dictionary. What the selective quotation of holy books won't necessarily tell you is what that power means in the context of how it is used. You don't necessarily get enough information.

Epicurus defines malevolence as having power to prevent evil and doing not doing so. Even if this definition of malevolence wasn't ridiculously broad and simplistic, it's still a problematic statement in that it presumes an understanding of the relationship a completely hypothetical being has (god) with a completely subjective idea (evil; subjective as far as we experience it).

Even then, it isn't necessarily as interesting as a critique of theism as it is as an appeal for a logically consistent definition of god. It presumes that god is defined in a certain way, and then seeks to show that this definition is inconsistent. The thing of it is that it is completely irrelevant when brought up in the context of deities who aren't defined in precisely the same way.

Willravel

It does, in fact. We like to pretend that "it's the literal body and blood of christ" vs. "it's the figurative body and blood of christ" is a huge gaping crevasse, but it really isn't. Very few people actually believe that it's the literal body and blood of christ, even though that's their denomination's official stance on the issue. The only real key difference is the faith to works ratio for salvation. Some say it's just faith, some say it's faith and works. Even in that, though, the "strictly faith" types, like the LCMS, still do preach works whether they want to admit it or not.

So yes, even though they'd like to think differently, most Christianity is the same. Judaism? You'll have to ask Levite. Islam? It's the word of Allah that it's a sin for there to be denominations. Yes, there's Shiite and Sunni, but the difference of opinion is simply over the teaching lineage from Muhammad. So really, Islam is pretty much just one big party too.
All power isn't vague at all. It's all power.
That sounds about right. Those who have the power to stop evil but who do not stop evil clearly are either apathetic or spiteful.
But, as I demonstrated above, a vast majority of religious people believe their deity to be omnipotent. There's no inconsistency there.

filtherton

There is a resemblance between difference sects of Christianity, which is to be expected, given that that Christians believe in Christ and reference the bible, beyond that, saying they're the same is ridiculous. That's like saying all economists are the same because they all talk about numbers and have all read Adam Smith. Maybe it's the same as far as you're concerned, but the fact that you can't be bothered to see distinctions doesn't mean that they don't exist.

There is something you're not getting here and it has to do not with the definition of power, but the way in which power is used. I can go outside and punch the first person I see. The fact that I don't says more about how I view the appropriate uses of my power than it does about the actual characteristics of my power. The definition of omnipotence is irrelevant to anything I'm saying. I've never disputed the fact that theists tend to believe in omnipotent gods.

Yeah, or they don't share your definition of evil, or your opinion that existence should be void of it...

You demonstrated something that I never disagreed with. My main qualm with Epicurus is that he presumes that there exists an objective definition of evil as it relates to the human experience. That's something that's very difficult to do; there are many different meaningful ways of defining evil. Perhaps you could hunt down a quote from a religious text where a god claims that the elimination of evil from the human experience is its goal.

Willravel

Yes some have minor differences, but saying they're not the same is ridiculous. I do see the tiny and insignificant differences, but they're academic. In practice they're basically identical. That's the bottom line.
"All powerful" doesn't speak to use, but rather speaks to ability. Omnipotent speaks to ability, malevolent speaks to use. Like omniscient speaks to ability, and voyeurism speaks to use.
I'm using "evil" based on religious axioms. Where do you suppose god falls in the parable of the good Samaritan?
He's doing the same thing I did above: he's utilizing axioms presented in religion to frame a logical statement. I'll translate by removing the axiom:
Is God willing to prevent that which is destructive and hurtful to people (including his followers), but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent or apathetic.

Ustwo

Interestingly I came to pretty much the exact same wording as Epicurus when I was in my teens.

In short God is either uncaring, impotent, or an asshole in the unlikely event it exists.

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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.

The_Jazz

I guess Shauk is right. Ustwo IS god.

__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

Willravel

Same thing here.

BTW, nice avatar... but my hat has horns, not bat wings.

Ustwo

You are so vain, I bet think this avatar is about you.

__________________
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.

n0nsensical

Perhaps without evil, there is no good.

Whether there is or is not a God as a separate being, we clearly have a certain power, and what we do with it is our choice. For example, when an industrial nation gives maniacal politicians unlimited power, things like World War 2 and the Holocaust tend to happen. God didn't kill those people, other humans did. Why should God be responsible for stopping the evils of humanity either? Who are we to question the motivations of God? Maybe God specifically gave us the power to do good or evil as we will. If he's out there, he could be trying to send us a message. And if he's not, we simply have no one else to blame.

__________________
"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

filtherton

Do we really need to compare and contrast the definitions of "similar" and "same"? I said they were similar, but not the same. You seem to be claiming that the words "similar" and "same" are synonyms. The fact that they have minor differences, or any differences at all, means that they are by definition not the same. But this is a semantic digression, and therefore dumb.

What's your point?

I don't care where god falls in the parable of the good Samaritan. As far as I can tell, jesus was only concerned with the behavior of humans.

Which religion's axioms are you using?

I'm still waiting for the bible verses where god claims that the not allowing evil to happen is part of its plan.

A hypothetical god might subscribe to the idea that life can't exist in any meaningful way without pain and suffering. I don't know. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to think of other possibilities for a hypothetical god's inaction in light of the existence of things you find distasteful. In any case, one might expect that any hypothetical being who held absolute control over the afterlife might not be too concerned with and destruction.

Really, though, this is stupid. Belief in god isn't a mathematical proof, attempting to treat it as such isn't necessarily all that revelatory. For some folks it's no more deep than the realization that rebellion is just, like, conforming to anti-conformity, dude.

No doubt with all the requisite imagination of an orthodontist in the making.

Willravel

You brought up " the definition of power, but the way in which power is used", to which I explained that all powerful speaks to ability, but not use. They are separate.
Which is why he never sinned! Wait...
Most places where evil is mentioned in the Bible present an axiom regarding evil. It creates a construct in which evil is real and has definite meaning. 00
I already explained this is moot. His "plan" is irrelevant.
Precisely. Belief in god is not rational nor logical. It is an act of indefensible and unreasonable faith...

(Edit)... and there's nothing wrong with that. If you want to believe in god, please go right ahead. Just don't force it on other people. And if you do, don't be surprised if I try to convert you to Islam out of spite.

Ustwo

You seem oddly resentful of my education. I can understand that being how you struggle with yours and I'm more than willing to give you some help in surviving and thriving in academia.

__________________
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.

Willravel

Scan your paycheck stub.

Ustwo

I told you already I'm in the red for a while still.

Plus future potential pay doesn't overcome looking at an additional decade or so of school. There are easier ways if you are only worried about the money aspect. I wouldn't have done it without the earning potential, but I wouldn't do it ONLY for the earning potential either.

__________________
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.

Redjake

Please see my earlier post:


Please explain why God doesn't stop:

A) Natural disasters
B) Evils of humanity and
C) Striking down those who worship him

without using the "because He has a plan that we don't understand/He is sending us a message that we don't comprehend right now/it was meant to be" explanation. I don't buy it, and to answer the OP, this right here is a good, solid, bonafide reason as to why some of us don't believe in God.

Can those who believe in God truly affirm that not only does God willingly allow for those He created to withstand utter evil and torture on this planet, He also allowed for thousands of other religions to be created, just so they can "compete" with His?

Yes, I'm sure God was like "boy, let's let all of these folks create all of these types of religions, some of which contain the same God but in a different context, so they can argue with each other and try to prove each other wrong and have suicide bombs and terrorize each other"

Again, it just doesn't add up. Why doesn't God send down Jesus again to confirm that His religion is the true faith? Solve centuries of conflict in one, fell swoop. "Hey guys, I'm Jesus, I'm God's Son. Worship God, because he is real. You will go to Heaven. Cya."

Done! Game over.

I'm guessing the explanation for that will again be "why should God have to do that" or "who is to say what God should and shouldn't have to do" and so on

I'm starting to ramble, so I'll cut to the point: the reason it's easy for some folks to not believe in a god/God is because there is just as much evidence AGAINST His reality as there is for. And they are primarily:

1. Evil exists, and God doesn't care to fix it right now - He will even allow for those that worship Him their entire lives to be destroyed
2. There are thousands of religions on Earth right now, and everybody thinks they are right - just as much as the next. How come just ONE of the deities in these religions won't set the record straight?
3. There's no tangible proof that any sort of deity exists
4. We've proven evolution exists, but the Bible contradicts it. Oops?

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

Willravel

Of course, but before putting money back in you're still making quite a bit I'm sure. The average dentist makes $110k a year, and I'd imagine a dentist in a large city that has a well established practice which he owns could make decidedly more.
So... you like teeth. Nothing wrong with that. I'm a fan myself. Without them, I'd need to use a blender on all my food. Some food shouldn't be blended.

But you're right, there are more direct routes to being cash rich at a younger age. An MA in business is less than 6 years.

Ustwo

Nah teeth suck, making people look better, feel better about themselves, live better, and get paid for it is nice though.

__________________
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.

Willravel

This reminds me of the Sean character on Nip/Tuck.
/threadjack

filtherton

I don't think I disagree with this at all. Epicurus fails because his concept of malevolence is overly broad and simplistic. It has nothing to do will omnipotence or all-powerfullness

So? What does this have to do with anything?

So what you're saying is that you don't have anything specific in mind, but you're pretty sure they're in there somewhere. That seems to be a little lacking in the rigor one might expect from a fella pushing an argument based on the utility of rigor.

"If evil occurs, god is malevolent."
What do you mean by evil?
"Oh, I don't know, some shit in the bible somewhere."

Even if the "somewhere in the bible" definition of evil was to play, it still ignores that fact that religious folk often interpret the bible, so that what might appear to you (someone who thinks all denominations are the same) to be a definition of evil might be taken to mean something else entirely by folks who actually practice.

I missed that part. Please explain it to me again like I'm slow.

It is rational and logical, if you have any sort of rational or logical commitment to the actual definitions of the words "rational" and "logical". Faith can be rational and logical. I'm not sure how word got out that it couldn't.

Belief in god isn't a mathematical proof in the sense that it doesn't seem all that likely that mathematical proofs could be used to invalidate the logical implications of the existence of a god. I'm sure folks have tried. Unfortunately, as Epicurus' ditty shows, one is doomed to dealing with axiomatic definitions of god that don't necessarily apply.

For the love of god, please help me climb the ivory tower, ustwo. Really, I appreciate you and your education, you just bring out the douche in me.

asaris

Isn't that like saying "Please explain air flight without using the principles of aerodynamics"? That is, the answer is that we don't understand it. Which seems to me to be just right if God exists and is in fact God. Wouldn't it be odd if we could understand why God did everything he did? That said, free will is at least a tentative answer to (B). I don't understand (C). (A) is hard; I don't have an explanation for it.

1 -- this is the general problem of evil, which I talked about above. I'll be honest, there's no really satisfactory answer other than faith.
2 -- Free will. God lets us mess up, because otherwise it wouldn't have any value when we didn't mess up. He wants to woo us, not overwhelm us; when he does set the record straight, it'll be too late. Also, mere correct belief isn't enough -- the devil has a better grasp of theology than most of us, but that's not going to save him.
3 -- There's certainly evidence, as I've argued elsewhere in this forum. As far as why there's no proof, see point 2.
4 -- The Bible doesn't contradict evolution. And we haven't proven evolution the way we've proven, say, that 2 + 2 = 4. It's the best theory going, but could possibly be revised or supplanted in the future.

__________________
"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

His definition of malevolence is semantically correct.
I'm saying that it's mentioned so often, that if I were to write out all the verses where it's mentioned, I'd crash TFP. Crack open the thing. Read it.
Why don't we do this, I'll choose 4 verses mentioning evil and use them to derive an axiom:
So, evil is, according to 4 random verses: the opposite of righteousness, stubbornness and rebelliousness, giving people something dangerous instead of what they ask for, and the opposite of peace. Let's apply this to Epicurus's riddle:
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 god willing to stop war (the opposite of peace)? Nope.
Is god willing to stop the process of having something dangerous be given to people? Nope.
Is god willing to stop stubbornness and rebelliousness? Nope.
Is god willing to stop that which is unjustified? Nope.
Unless god's "plan" supersedes logic, it doesn't negate the logic in the riddle.
How often in this thread have to asked me to essentially look something up for you? And how often have you been frustrated that the conversation turns to semantics?
www.dictionary.com
Go right ahead.

filtherton

Yes, but it also means that we are all malevolent, since we aren't presently doing everything in our power to prevent evil. In which case, why even have the word?

I don't want to, and my argument doesn't require me to.

Why would you expect a god to define evil for humans in the same way that that god defines evil for itself? As far as I can tell, the god you quote seems to think that evil is something people do to one another. No where does it say that god aims to prevent evil altogether. It seems to me that implicit in some christian belief systems is the idea that god doesn't want people to be evil, but then leaves it up to them.

The fact that bad things happen isn't proof that god is malevolent. It's proof that god lets bad things happen. Malevolence also speaks to intent, and the fact that a god lets bad things happen says nothing about intent.

Nothing can negate the logic of the riddle. That doesn't mean the riddle says anything interesting. All it says is that defining a god, omnipotence, malevolence, etc. in a specific way leads to a logical contradiction. If you define a those things in a different way then the argument becomes irrelevant. If you add a new axiom concerning the motivations of a hypothetical god then you can change the conclusion entirely.

If you'd use words correctly then we wouldn't have problems.

Willravel

Everyone is human, so why have the word?
Why would I use a different meaning of evil for god?
God letting bad things happen is apathy, malevolence or inability. Try to name another reason.
Then the matter is settled. Filtherton concedes that the logic is correct, despite his lengthy arguments to the contrary.
You have yet to prove me wrong.

filtherton

So we can argue about what it means, of course.

I can't make sense of this sentence.

It doesn't take much imagination to conceive of a god who's attitude towards humans is "hey, humans, some things are evil, don't to them because they make your already fucked up situation worse". This attitude doesn't say anything about whether that particular god feels motivated to act in accordance with that attitude itself. Maybe god is just a hypocrite.

Perhaps god could be considered apathetic, though a lack of action doesn't necessarily imply apathy. I'm not apathetic to the plight of earthquake victims in China even though I'm not doing anything to help them. Their problems are actually quite moving.

Did Epicurus mention apathy at all? I though we were caught up on malevolence.

I never argued that the logic was incorrect. I argued that the axioms upon which it is based are irrelevant; they don't apply to many common definitions of god. It's a good example of how an argument can be logically sound and based on faulty or unsupported premises.

Well, I might have, but since you apparently didn't know what my point was then you might not have been able to see it when I proved you wrong.