• Wayfarer
    22.5k
    1.If God exists, he would remove evil from the worldtryhard

    I find it hard to imagine how anything like 'a world' could exist without the possibility of suffering. After all, animals predate each other. Evolution is a nasty and messy business, replete with extinctions, merciless struggle everywhere. So what do you expect? Once the possibility of death and disease exists, then how could you have a world without any suffering?

    3.God could have created a world without these types eviltryhard

    The Holocaust was the work of human beings. Starvation is a consequence of overpopulation, shortage of resources, drought. Do you expect a God to literally come down and take military action against the Nazis, or distribute food aid to the poor?

    There's an old joke. A priest was driven to the steeple of his church by a catastrophic flood. A man of devout faith, he prayed to God to save him.

    Soon a man in a rowboat came by and the fellow shouted to priest “Jump in, I can save you.”

    The priest shouted back, “No, I’m praying to God and He will save me.”

    So the rowboat went on.

    Then a motorboat came by. The fellow in the motorboat shouted, “Jump in, I can save you.”

    To this the priest said, “No thanks, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me. I have faith.”

    So the motorboat went on.

    Then a helicopter came by and the pilot shouted down, “Grab this rope and I will lift you to safety.”

    To this the priest again replied, “No thanks, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me. I have faith.”

    So the helicopter flew away.

    Soon the water rose above the rooftop and the man drowned. He went to Heaven. He finally got his chance to discuss this whole situation with God, at which point he exclaimed, “I had faith in you but you didn’t save me, you let me drown. I don’t understand why!”

    To this God replied, “I sent you a rowboat and a motorboat and a helicopter, what more did you want?”
  • charles ferraro
    369


    Gnostic Christianity proposed its own unique “explanation” for the existence of evil which differed significantly from the “explanation” proposed by orthodox Christianity.

    It went something like this.

    Gnostic Christianity believed in a completely unknowable Transcendent God which was revealed to be a timeless trinity of Father, Mother, and Son. This Transcendent God emanated and contained within itself a realm of spiritual fullness (the Pleroma) that consisted of a series of emanated spiritual beings (Aeons).

    The very last emanated spiritual being or Aeon, called Sophia (Wisdom), longed to have an unmediated, direct knowledge of the Transcendent God. But such unmediated knowledge (gnosis) was not permitted to any Aeon because doing so successfully would erase the Aeon’s emanation, absorb it back into the Transcendent God, and cause the Aeon to lose its identity.

    Sophia’s effort to have direct knowledge of the Transcendent God failed, but since she was a spiritual being, she automatically emanated from herself a defective, imperfect, inferior version of The Transcendent God. This inferior version of the Transcendent God was named Ialdabaoth.

    Ialdabaoth stole spiritual power from his mother (Wisdom), fell outside the fullness of the Pleroma, and created an imperfect, defective copy of the Pleroma, which became our universe. Ialdabaoth also created imperfect copies of the Aeons, called Archons, to rule over the universe.

    Ialdabaoth Is also said to be responsible for human beings falling from the Pleroma into the universe, imprisoning them in physical bodies, and causing them to forget their prior existence in the pleroma.

    Being ignorant of the Transcendent God, Ialdabaoth claims that he is the only true God who rules over the created universe and its inhabitants.

    Of course, there is much more to this religious epic, but enough has been presented at this point to at least indicate how and why evil exists in the created universe and who is responsible for it from the perspective of Gnostic Christianity.

    Any opinions about this?
  • chiknsld
    314
    Well most people believe in a God that gives freewill. The argument of evil is only purported by those with rose-colored glasses.
  • Shwah
    259

    This except I say everything that is good is just what God created or is existence (through God). There are then degrees of good as we get closer to the most universal good which is God. This overlaps with reality perfectly for me like in science, math etc. It's just the most accurate.
  • Alkis Piskas
    2.1k

    the problem of evil is the most powerful argument against the theist argumenttryhard
    Is it? Who is using that argument against theism?
    If you are referring to atheism/atheists, you should state that. Anyway, not so important.

    If God exists, he would remove evil from the worldtryhard
    1) What is considered as "evil"? (One must first define that first.)
    2) Why God would remove evil (however this is defined)? Based on what?

    So, to me the first assumption-proposition is evidently baseless. Hence, the whole argumental/logical construction falls apart. It can't support God's inexistence (or anything else, for that matter).

    I know that there's a lot of argumentation in favor and against the existence of God, by theists and atheist, resp/ly. But there's also another category, which I call "no-theists" for whom God is just a concept. God does not exist for them. That's all. (It may be quite similar to what is known as "nontheism", but since I don't know much about it, I cannot talk from that perspective.)
    This, in my opinion, is the most rational position on the subject. I explain why below.

    There's no meaning in talking about and/or trying to prove the inexistence of something, which one believes that it does not exist or one does not believe it exists. And God is one of them. So, however any attempt to prove the inexistence of God --using the above argumentation scheme or any other-- is destined to fail.

    The existence of God is a question of personal experience and belief. Neither of them is open to dispute.
  • Shwah
    259

    Evil doesn't exist until you can show an object "evil" and then show causation of "evil" to other objects in reality. Actions are too general and can be in many contradicting categories and "suffering" can't be evil as sometimes pain is good as an evolutionary response etc.
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    Suffering, as a necessary evil? Does that mean happiness is a contingent good? :chin:
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    I find it hard to imagine how anything like 'a world' could exist without the possibility of suffering

    Hmmm. So the holocaust was inevitable, necessary. Ought implies can?
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