If there is a god is he evil?

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honorentheos
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Re: If there is a god is he evil?

Post by honorentheos »

mentalgymnast wrote:
Fri Feb 19, 2021 7:04 pm

A perfect world is not in the cards here in this fallen world..
Claiming the world is fallen is evil.
mentalgymnast
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Re: If there is a god is he evil?

Post by mentalgymnast »

honorentheos wrote:
Sat Feb 20, 2021 8:57 am
mentalgymnast wrote:
Fri Feb 19, 2021 7:04 pm

A perfect world is not in the cards here in this fallen world..
Claiming the world is fallen is evil.
Here are the elements of a fallen world according to the words of Jehovah in the Old Testament:

Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.

Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground.

Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Why is making these claims evil? Each one of these elements of a fallen world, as enumerated by the creator Himself, describes rather accurately the world in which we live.

Regards,
MG
Lem
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Re: If there is a god is he evil?

Post by Lem »

Gadianton wrote:
Fri Feb 19, 2021 5:28 am
If the police officers were superhuman aliens like Star Trek's Q, then answers 5 and 9 wouldn't be so absurd.
I'll admit the "officer" analogy assumes God with certain responsibilities that maybe he doesn't have, but "Q" has built-in aloofness, given he's a fellow evolved life form with no jurisdiction over humans. We don't expect Q to step in not primarily because he's 150 steps ahead, but because it's not his business. The Enterprise likewise has their prime directive. But had the Enterprise concocted these other worlds in a lab, it feels like the cop analogy begins to fit.

My problem with Officer 5 is that it's a cake-and-eat-too out. One contribution from Christian theologians is that God, to be God, isn't just a cause, but is personable. So, I can nearly buy into some kind of pantheism or alternative weird-ass depth to reality where something describable in some way as intelligence is ultimately behind everything, and that if we understood this massive depth, we would see everything differently. Well, would such a force be personable enough to be "God"? And if pain and suffering don't mean anything when we come to understand this massive depth, then why would moral norms and commandments stay meaningful, and worse, have eternal implications? It seems to me that if God is personable enough to share norms he's saddled humans with, and expects humans to live by, that he can't just play the "oh, if you knew what I knew card" so easily.

My problem with officer 9 is similar. Granting this is all just a spec in the grand scheme, and the glory of the next world incinerates the pain of this one as a forest fire consumes a dry leaf, then why does what we do matter so much to our future in the eternal realm? Just as pain is fleeting, so is sin, and so are horrible crimes.
Nobody is going to say that little kids occasionally scraping their knees proves that there is no good God. That level of evil seems pretty bad at the time to the children involved but adults know good things in the world that far outweigh the scraped knees. It doesn't seem too hard to suppose that maybe a universe that allows some scraped knees could really be a lot better than one that sacrifices other possibilities in order to ensure that scraped knees never happen
Right, I think the argument in the realm of the evidential problem of evil, is the mounting of accidental or meaningless evil. There's no firm line in the sand. Some people can let a fawn die in a forest fire without blinking, some can let a thousand or a million die.
The officer analogy may attribute "God with certain responsibilities that maybe he doesn't have," but certain humans certainly do afford their version of god those attributes.

A particularly appalling variation on the Officer 5 argument was offered up here a year or so ago, in the context of the risks associated with Mormon bishop's interviews of children. The argument was that god let pedophiles abuse children so they could be caught and then have an opportunity to repent. It was a particularly horrifying effort to explain evil, simply to justify the belief that a god exists in a world where things happen, regardless of what we label them.

Taking this back to the original argument, it seems that postulating an evil supernatural being has no more support than postulating a good supernatural being. In my opinion, both attempts only lend more weight to the atheist position (or agnostic, given the several definitions of both discussed in this thread).
Fence Sitter
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Re: If there is a god is he evil?

Post by Fence Sitter »

Mormonism's shallow lake definition of theodicy is equal to Scientology's definition of science.
The Mormon god isn't evil so much as he is feeble.
Chap
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Re: If there is a god is he evil?

Post by Chap »

mentalgymnast wrote:
Sat Feb 20, 2021 5:06 pm
[...]

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground.

Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

[...]
Is there any significance in the fact that a Mormon quoting Genesis 3:19 omits the end of the sentence above?
19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
Is that reference to humanity having been taken from the ground theologically awkward, or what? Is the claim that humanity came from somewhere else?
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
Not only have I denounced the Big Lie, I have denounced the Big lie big lie.
honorentheos
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Re: If there is a god is he evil?

Post by honorentheos »

mentalgymnast wrote:
Sat Feb 20, 2021 5:06 pm
Why is making these claims evil? Each one of these elements of a fallen world, as enumerated by the creator Himself, describes rather accurately the world in which we live.

Regards,
MG
Whoever said that isn't responsible for the existence of the universe. People who share it do so to manipulate other people, using it to enforce concepts of sin and being fallen that are simply power moves. And they are evil. When you do so, you are chosing evil over the divine.
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