[Rushy]

It’s nonsense. Assuming omnipotence, there is no need for lessons, wisdom, pain or strife. All of the wisdom that we gain from those things, he could imbue us with. Allowing children to be raped is beyond reprehensible and could only be for his own curiosity or enjoyment. If any human allowed a girl to be raped, had the capability to prevent it, didn’t but felt bad you, would tell them to get fucked and do something next time. You only let your skyfather off the hook because it’s a cultural artifact you were raised with.

This is just an argument that boils down to Douglas Adams saying “The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

You can say it's not fair that God allows evil to exist, but you must admit you're arguing that the universe itself simply shouldn't exist. Our existence requires the existence of choice and choice implies that choosing the wrong thing is possible. Ask yourself what you would do if you had the power to stop all rape. Would you stop at just stopping rape? Would you stop everything you deem to be evil? Would you accept arguments from other humans about what is or isn't evil? At what point are the humans you have such absolute control over no longer human and instead just little biological robots you've programmed to perform a nice orderly set of 'good' actions?

Further, would you go as far as to stop people before they perform the action in the first place? If we accept that the universe isn't deterministic (this could, scientifically, be the case), then you can't know what someone is going to do before they do it. Would you stop an action because it just may result in something you deemed to be evil?

The logical conclusion of "God should not allow evil" doesn't hold water, especially since it always includes your personal opinion of what evil is. You can be upset about this or claim that God must be an evil being because your personal opinion of what constitutes evil is different, but merely saying "for God to exist, evil must not exist" is quite simply not correct and it has never held in any philosophical or theological debate, because again, the conclusion results in our universe not existing.

[BillO]

Rushy is right.  Its the problem with Free Will.

Remember, the entire Old Testimate is full of God's medling to try and fix 'Evil'.  He turned a city to salt and flooded the entire world (except one super good family), killing everyone, including innocent babies and fetuses.  The world was still evil after a short time.
He then sent down Jesus (himself).  THAT didn't work either.

Evil must exist because we have free will.  And God the cop didn't work.  Literal Genocide didn't stop it.  Which means that Free Will inevitably leads to evil existing.
And as Rusy said, God would need to personally intervene in every single act of pain.  But lets say God stops all rapists by making them die if they rape someone.  He then has to define Rape.  Is it rape if they're married?  If she wants to stop half way through?  WE say yes, but if God says yes, then that means he's probably gonna kill alot more people.  People who might not want God to kill them.

If God removes the concept of Rape from existence, how would he do it?  Well, we need to determine why people rape and remove that.  They rape because they're horny (which is what you need to be to want to make babies) or they want to overpower someone, which is part of a larger system of dominance, which helps keep us alive and masters of the world.  "The meek shall inherit the earth" doesn't work if said meek get eaten by wolves.


So yeah... its complicated shit.
I mean, we had enough food, water, shelter, and land for most of human history.  Hell, we STILL could feed everyone.  We just don't want to.

Agreed.  If we are to believe any of this crap then this God creature knowingly created evil and designed us to murder, rape, enslave and exploit each other.  How nice, how full of grace.  What a uniquely perverse thing this God must be.  Not only that but we're then supposed to worship such a despicable thing.

[Rushy]

designed us to murder, rape, enslave and exploit each other

Those are choices that humans inflict on other humans and themselves.

[BillO]

designed us to murder, rape, enslave and exploit each other

Those are choices that humans inflict on other humans and themselves.

Fine.  Then, from your God's perspective, what is the point of all this?

[Rushy]

Fine.  Then, from your God's perspective, what is the point of all this?

Well the general timeline of the Abrahamic God seems to have an underlying current of "first I made a bunch of angels, forced them to worship me 24/7, got bored, then I made beings that can choose to worship me or tell me to fuck off"

Seems to me that God just wanted a bunch of beings capable of judging God's actions without having enough power to represent a threat. We can also go with the classic "you cannot comprehend God's plan because it's beyond your human ability to do so" but that's quite the cop-out.

In any case, whether or not God exists, it seems the vast majority of humanity's woes are imposed by humanity. Seems wrong to me to blame God for merely allowing humanity to choose between good and evil, then getting upset when people keep choosing evil. Ultimately, you can only control what you yourself do and that's generally why Christianity focuses on forgiveness of the self (but also forgiving the misdeeds of others). Understanding that sin is inevitable and that sin is fundamental to the universe is part of all Abrahamic faiths.

[Rama Set]

It’s nonsense. Assuming omnipotence, there is no need for lessons, wisdom, pain or strife. All of the wisdom that we gain from those things, he could imbue us with. Allowing children to be raped is beyond reprehensible and could only be for his own curiosity or enjoyment. If any human allowed a girl to be raped, had the capability to prevent it, didn’t but felt bad you, would tell them to get fucked and do something next time. You only let your skyfather off the hook because it’s a cultural artifact you were raised with.

This is just an argument that boils down to Douglas Adams saying “The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

You can say it's not fair that God allows evil to exist, but you must admit you're arguing that the universe itself simply shouldn't exist.

No I’m not. I’m arguing that if there is a god he has knowingly and willfully used his omnipotence and omniscience to create suffering when it’s not necessary. Whether or not that is evil is obviously subjective but what isn’t is that God must allow suffering unnecessarily or he isn’t omnipotent.

Our existence requires the existence of choice and choice implies that choosing the wrong thing is possible. Ask yourself what you would do if you had the power to stop all rape. Would you stop at just stopping rape? Would you stop everything you deem to be evil? Would you accept arguments from other humans about what is or isn't evil? At what point are the humans you have such absolute control over no longer human and instead just little biological robots you've programmed to perform a nice orderly set of 'good' actions?

If I were omniscient and I had to power to end suffering with no negative consequences I obviously would.

Further, would you go as far as to stop people before they perform the action in the first place? If we accept that the universe isn't deterministic (this could, scientifically, be the case), then you can't know what someone is going to do before they do it. Would you stop an action because it just may result in something you deemed to be evil?

The logical conclusion of "God should not allow evil" doesn't hold water, especially since it always includes your personal opinion of what evil is. You can be upset about this or claim that God must be an evil being because your personal opinion of what constitutes evil is different, but merely saying "for God to exist, evil must not exist" is quite simply not correct and it has never held in any philosophical or theological debate, because again, the conclusion results in our universe not existing.

It doesn’t depend on my opinion, it depends on God’s, and the Bible tells us rape is surely evil.

[Tom Bishop]

God throws his hands up and says, "Meh.  Free will." then turns around a walks out while closing the door behind Him.

Actually that is not what the Bible says happens to people who are evil.

[markjo]

designed us to murder, rape, enslave and exploit each other

Those are choices that humans inflict on other humans and themselves.

Fine.  Then, from your God's perspective, what is the point of all this?

The way I see it, God gave us free will as a test of character.  If you choose to do good, then you pass.  If you choose to do evil, then you fail.

[Rushy]

No I’m not. I’m arguing that if there is a god he has knowingly and willfully used his omnipotence and omniscience to create suffering when it’s not necessary. Whether or not that is evil is obviously subjective but what isn’t is that God must allow differing unnecessarily or he isn’t omnipotent.

That's just the thing, though, you're under the impression that God 'created suffering' when all that happened was the creation of the choice itself. If I gave you two buttons, one that blows the Earth up and one that gives 1000 orphans loving parents, then you decide to push the Blow-Up-The-Earth button: am I the bad guy for giving you the buttons in the first place? I don't think so (you may think so, but this is just our separation of opinions at this point). In my opinion, the evil is performed by the one that chooses to do the action, not the one that provided the choice.

If I were omniscient and I had to power to end suffering with no negative consequences I obviously would.

You're not merely ending suffering, though, you're ending the ability for people to choose to do good. The actions of humans no longer matter because you control them. Yes, the world is now more 'good', at the cost of its humanity. The universe is now nothing more than your wind-up toy and absolutely not the living universe we currently experience.

It doesn’t depend on my opinion, it depends on God’s, and the Bible tells us rape is surely evil.

Is that really your conclusion from what I wrote?

[BillO]

Well the general timeline of the Abrahamic God seems to have an underlying current of "first I made a bunch of angels, forced them to worship me 24/7, got bored, then I made beings that can choose to worship me or tell me to fuck off"

Seems to me that God just wanted a bunch of beings capable of judging God's actions without having enough power to represent a threat. We can also go with the classic "you cannot comprehend God's plan because it's beyond your human ability to do so" but that's quite the cop-out.

In any case, whether or not God exists, it seems the vast majority of humanity's woes are imposed by humanity. Seems wrong to me to blame God for merely allowing humanity to choose between good and evil, then getting upset when people keep choosing evil. Ultimately, you can only control what you yourself do and that's generally why Christianity focuses on forgiveness of the self (but also forgiving the misdeeds of others). Understanding that sin is inevitable and that sin is fundamental to the universe is part of all Abrahamic faiths.

You paint a pretty dire picture of this God thing.  So, he was there for an infinite amount of time, then all of a sudden decided he wanted some attention and amusement so created us and made us evil.  Cool.  However, that does not explain all his hard work in the old testament to eradicate evil.  His final attempt was to mortalize his son (which is really him) then have us evil dudes murder him and that somehow was supposed to  do .. exactly what?

See, the problem I have with all this is that God is supposed to be all knowing.  He knew in advance exactly what would happen - in all cases .. in everything.  It's like having all the cheat codes for a game plus knowing the outcome before playing it for the fist time.  There is no point.  The whole concept is utterly and literally unbelievable. 

[BillO]

The way I see it, God gave us free will as a test of character.  If you choose to do good, then you pass.  If you choose to do evil, then you fail.

So, he was around for infinity with an empty heaven then suddenly decided to create a universe to filter random prospects to fill it so they could fawn over him?

[markjo]

The way I see it, God gave us free will as a test of character.  If you choose to do good, then you pass.  If you choose to do evil, then you fail.

So, he was around for infinity with an empty heaven then suddenly decided to create a universe to filter random prospects to fill it so they could fawn over him?

Personally, I think that God is beyond such human concepts as time.  Besides, He already had the angles in heaven to fawn over Him, but angles have no free will.  Then again, there was supposedly that big to do when Lucifer led a rebellion among the angles and was cast out from heaven, but since there aren't really any reliable witnesses to what was going on in heaven before creation, who can really say?  But anyway, perhaps God created humans as a sociological experiment to see what would happen to finite beings with free will.  Then again (again), it's a big universe that's been around for a while, so who is to say that humans are His only experiment with free will?

[BillO]

But anyway, perhaps God created humans as a sociological experiment to see what would happen to finite beings with free will.  Then again (again), it's a big universe that's been around for a while, so who is to say that humans are His only experiment with free will?

Well, this is quite honestly the best speculation I have ever heard!

Now, we just need some hard evidence of God's existence.

[Tom Bishop]

Well, this is quite honestly the best speculation I have ever heard!

Now, we just need some hard evidence of God's existence.

You can prove to yourself whether the Bible is true any time you want. You merely need to go on a shooting spree in an elementary school and then take yourself out in an epic mass murder suicide.

[stack]

Well, this is quite honestly the best speculation I have ever heard!

Now, we just need some hard evidence of God's existence.

You can prove to yourself whether the Bible is true any time you want. You merely need to go on a shooting spree in an elementary school and then take yourself out in an epic mass murder suicide.

Quite the dark and creepy example. You should see someone about such thoughts.

In any case, how does a dead person prove something to themselves when they are dead?

[Tom Bishop]

Well, this is quite honestly the best speculation I have ever heard!

Now, we just need some hard evidence of God's existence.

You can prove to yourself whether the Bible is true any time you want. You merely need to go on a shooting spree in an elementary school and then take yourself out in an epic mass murder suicide.

Quite the dark and creepy example. You should see someone about such thoughts.

In any case, how does a dead person prove something to themselves when they are dead?

If the Bible is true, you will be judged by heaven and sent to damnation.

If the Bible is false, you won't experience this.

Sinful suicide on its own without significant moral history in your life might send you to the rumored limbo or null realm where your soul is stale or recycled and give you indeterminable results, and living a good and honest life to get into heaven will take too long, so in order to prove it any time you want with clear results you will have to commit an unspeakable evil. I personally think it would be abhorrent of you to do such a thing, but this is irrelevant to the question of whether it is possible for you to prove the premise of the Bible.

[AATW]

The only way to prove or disprove it is to do something which means you can’t tell anyone else the results of your experiment.

[stack]

Well, this is quite honestly the best speculation I have ever heard!

Now, we just need some hard evidence of God's existence.

You can prove to yourself whether the Bible is true any time you want. You merely need to go on a shooting spree in an elementary school and then take yourself out in an epic mass murder suicide.

Quite the dark and creepy example. You should see someone about such thoughts.

In any case, how does a dead person prove something to themselves when they are dead?

If the Bible is true, you will be judged by heaven and sent to damnation.

If the Bible is false, you won't experience this.

Sinful suicide on its own without significant moral history in your life might send you to the rumored limbo or null realm where your soul is stale or recycled and give you indeterminable results, and living a good and honest life to get into heaven will take too long, so in order to prove it any time you want with clear results you will have to commit an unspeakable evil. I personally think it would be abhorrent of you to do such a thing, but this is irrelevant to the question of whether it is possible for you to prove the premise of the Bible.

I wasn't aware that the bible peddled in rumor & innuendo. Good to know to not take the bible as fact. More like hearsay, it seems.

A dead man can't prove he went to heaven, hell, or this "rumored" purgatory. Even to himself. He's dead. He's pushing up the daisies! Bereft of life. He's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible.

[AATW]

I wasn't aware that the bible peddled in rumor & innuendo.

It doesn’t. That’s humans you’re thinking of

[BillO]

You can prove to yourself whether the Bible is true any time you want. You merely need to go on a shooting spree in an elementary school and then take yourself out in an epic mass murder suicide.

All that would prove is that I am insane.

We all know the bible was supposedly written several thousand years ago by a bunch of goat fu... ahh, herders in long lost dialects of ancient languages of various kinds, cherry picked, translated, then re-translated, then subject to multiple interpretations.  So we have proof it is complete BS without even having to open the covers.  Then when we do open it up we find, to no surprise, it is incoherent, inconsistent and self contradicting.

No, I'm looking for some hard evidence for your, or any other, God.