[quote=“Chris”]I once managed to get into the Flora Expo after 9:00pm.
Bow before Me.[/quote]
I believe! 
It’s logically flawed; it’s a syllogism predicated on the fallacy of the undistributed middle. By ‘evil’ Epicurus means ‘all evil’, though he does not define precisely what this ‘evil’ is (I would look up the Greek word he used if I could be bothered, but it’s probably just κακός and the general way in which it’s used suggests he’s not using it with a narrowly defined meaning). This generalization renders most of his case invalid.
- Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Non sequitur, since no explanation is given as to why this necessitates a lack of omnipotence. A lack of omnipotence would only result if the reason for inability was, literally, a lack of potens (power). But an omnipotent being may have other reasons for not being able to do something. It may be contrary to their character, or contrary to their design for the universe. In any case, a logically coherent omnipotent being cannot do anything logically contradictory (such as create a rock it cannot lift, square the circle, etc).
- Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Non sequitur again. It assumes that malevolence is the only reason for not being willing to prevent evil. But there are distinctions to be made here. We must distinguish between prescriptive will (what God wants to be), and God’s decretal will (what God permits or ordains to be). Put it like this. Is a parent willing to punish their child? Well yes and no. No, they don’t want to punish their child, for a range of reasons, including their own empathy and love (‘I really don’t want to do this’, is what they tell you just before you get the wooden spoon). But yes, they want to punish their child (and shall indeed punish their child), because the child broke their commandments and requires discipline for its own good. In fact if you cast the entire Epicurean dilemma in a parent/child context, its flaws quickly become apparent.
- Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Classic non sequitur. This assumes that no evil would ever come if God was both able and willing to prevent evil. But there could be any number of reasons why evil would continue despite God being both able and willing to prevent it. The classical response to theodicy is the liberum arbitrium defense (free will), and there’s also the delayed gratification defense (the idea that God allows evil to happen in order to develop our character through deprivation), and the discipline defense (the idea that God allows evil to happen in order to develop our character through discipline). There’s also the cost of creation defense (that the specific form of life on earth God required, necessitated certain kinds of evil), which would take a little bit of time for me to articulate.
- Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
This is the only good point he makes. 
How about it? What’s the relevance of this to my beliefs? 
I don’t see why I can’t retain my faith while adhering to truth and logic. In fact on this forum it’s my dogged seeking for objective truth (as opposed to unsubstantiated personal opinion), and my pedantic application of logic (as opposed to the Dunning-Kruger level of discourse), which typically gets me in trouble with people on a range of subjects.
If Heaven is a realm in which there is no evil, then do its inhabitants have free will?
Certainly it is, and certainly they do. However, its inhabitants do not have the propensity for evil we do, because they are a different kind of being.Our evil acts derive from direct or indirect selfishness, the natural instinct of independent biological organisms to self-optimize; to improve their standard of living, to reproduce, and to take steps to survive.
Heaven is a realm in which there are no independent biological organisms seeking to self-optimize; its inhabitants (God, Jesus, angels; I don’t believe there’s anyone else ‘up’ there), are all already superlatively self-optimized. Specifically:
- They have no need to improve their standard of living
- They do not reproduce
- They have no need take steps to survive
It’s logically flawed; it’s a syllogism predicated on the fallacy of the undistributed middle. By ‘evil’ Epicurus means ‘all evil’, though he does not define precisely what this ‘evil’ is (I would look up the Greek word he used if I could be bothered, but it’s probably just κακός and the general way in which it’s used suggests he’s not using it with a narrowly defined meaning). This generalization renders most of his case invalid.
- Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Non sequitur, since no explanation is given as to why this necessitates a lack of omnipotence. A lack of omnipotence would only result if the reason for inability was, literally, a lack of potens (power). But an omnipotent being may have other reasons for not being able to do something. It may be contrary to their character, or contrary to their design for the universe. In any case, a logically coherent omnipotent being cannot do anything logically contradictory (such as create a rock it cannot lift, square the circle, etc).
- Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Non sequitur again. It assumes that malevolence is the only reason for not being willing to prevent evil. But there are distinctions to be made here. We must distinguish between prescriptive will (what God wants to be), and God’s decretal will (what God permits or ordains to be). Put it like this. Is a parent willing to punish their child? Well yes and no. No, they don’t want to punish their child, for a range of reasons, including their own empathy and love (‘I really don’t want to do this’, is what they tell you just before you get the wooden spoon). But yes, they want to punish their child (and shall indeed punish their child), because the child broke their commandments and requires discipline for its own good. In fact if you cast the entire Epicurean dilemma in a parent/child context, its flaws quickly become apparent.
- Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Classic non sequitur. This assumes that no evil would ever come if God was both able and willing to prevent evil. But there could be any number of reasons why evil would continue despite God being both able and willing to prevent it. The classical response to theodicy is the liberum arbitrium defense (free will), and there’s also the delayed gratification defense (the idea that God allows evil to happen in order to develop our character through deprivation), and the discipline defense (the idea that God allows evil to happen in order to develop our character through discipline). There’s also the cost of creation defense (that the specific form of life on earth God required, necessitated certain kinds of evil), which would take a little bit of time for me to articulate.
- Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
This is the only good point he makes.
[/quote]
Beautifully done, Fortigurn! I have a very good Athiest friend who likes to quote (attributed by him to Epicurious) this. I always respond that to me it just shows a profound lack of imagination. My friend just laughs at me. I wish I could respond to him as well as you just did.
And to your thoughts on heaven, I agree. But I do feel like jealousy is a sin of selfishness. Satan, Lucifer in heaven, was jealous. At least, as I understand it. He was the most beautiful of all the angles, but wanted to be worshiped like God, or wanted to be at God’s right hand, in the place of Jesus. My understanding was that he convinced 1/3 of the other angles that if they worshiped him, they’d have greater powers, too. Lucifer was cast out of heaven into hell–which was prepared specifically for him–and not originally for humans–and 1/3 of the angles were cast out with him and became demons.
But it’s been a really, really long time since I’ve thought about that, so . . . .
[quote=“Fortigurn”]
Heaven is a realm in which there are no independent biological organisms seeking to self-optimize; its inhabitants (God, Jesus, angels; I don’t believe there’s anyone else ‘up’ there), are all already superlatively self-optimized. Specifically:
- They have no need to improve their standard of living
- They do not reproduce
- They have no need take steps to survive[/quote]
Believe it or not, sincere question, and I know what some of the rabbinical takes on this are, but in this scenario how is there allowance for the First War in Heaven and casting out of the Morningstar?
Or is that not taken into consideration?
Certainly it is, and certainly they do. However, its inhabitants do not have the propensity for evil we do, because they are a different kind of being.Our evil acts derive from direct or indirect selfishness, the natural instinct of independent biological organisms to self-optimize; to improve their standard of living, to reproduce, and to take steps to survive.
Heaven is a realm in which there are no independent biological organisms seeking to self-optimize; its inhabitants (God, Jesus, angels; I don’t believe there’s anyone else ‘up’ there), are all already superlatively self-optimized. Specifically:
- They have no need to improve their standard of living
- They do not reproduce
- They have no need take steps to survive[/quote]
Then why would it even be necessary for god to set up a system incorporating evil and suffering on earth? Why couldn’t he just create heaven as a place for his created being to live in?
[quote=“the chief”]Believe it or not, sincere question, and I know what some of the rabbinical takes on this are, but in this scenario how is there allowance for the First War in Heaven and casting out of the Morningstar?
Or is that not taken into consideration?[/quote]
You’re touching on housecat’s point, which I wasn’t going to address since I have a different take (I’d prefer to save that for another thread, if we address it at all). First of all the ‘morning star’ in Isaiah 14:12 is a direct reference to the king of Babylon, to whom the entire polemic in the chapter is addressed (verse 4, ‘you will taunt the king of Babylon with these words’). It is not a reference to a fallen angel.
Secondly, the identification of an individual named ‘Lucifer’ in this passage is a misleading backtranslation. The word ‘lucifer’ was not even originally a proper name. It was a cognate Latin noun (the compounds are lux = light, ferre = carry, thus ‘light bearer’), coined in the 5th century Latin rendering of this passage, and did not become used as a proper name until later. A search of the Clementine Vulgate, the 16th century edition of the Latin Bible edited by Jerome (mine is the electronic edition of Tweedale), turns up the use of the word ‘lucifer’ in a couple of passages which clearly have absolutely nothing to do with satan (Job 11:17, 2 Peter 1:19). This was not originally understood as a reference to Satan; that was a later interpretation.
The short answer therefore is that the Hebrew Bible contains no reference to a first war in heaven and a casting out of a disobedient angelic ‘morning star’. I will check the authoritative DDD when I get home, but I don’t think it will have much more to add.
Chris, it’s called the ‘cost of creation’. God wanted people who would mature in a certain way through challenging experiences (Hebrews 12:5-11). Look up ‘delayed gratification’.
Maybe when you’re God, all your creation knows you are God. Maybe He went out of His way to creat a creature as dumb as a human, give it free will, and let it loose because He wanted to be loved freely, He wanted to be desired by someone or something that didn’t HAVE to love or desire Him.
I can’t pretend to understand the mind of God, but that makes sense to me as a woman! In heaven, as I understand it, the angles have free will, but they’re constantly with God. They IN HEAVEN! It seems unlikely that they they’d choose not to love God without some serious other incentive.
Man, well, he was dumb, he was in a miraculous garden, he had a hot woman who was actually MADE FOR him–why would he need to love God? And God didn’t compell man to love Him. He came to talk with man in the cool of the evening and wooed him.
Maybe God just wanted a friend?
Spot on. The paradigm we’re presented with (from Genesis to Revelation), is that of the parent and the child. That works for me.
Then what about babies who die of natural causes? Stillbirths? They’re too young to have experienced life’s challenges and matured.
But if he could make Adam and Eve, why not just make two Eves and be done with it? Well that’s what I would’ve done.
Anyway, a very entertaining read. 
HG
Indeed they are. Their deaths are of no instructive purpose to them. Their deaths are, however, part of the cost of creation; when you make mortal beings then cell death, DNA replication errors, and a host of physical vulnerabilities, are part of the price to be paid. And you’re talking to someone who knows what a miscarriage feels like, by the way.
HGC, glad you’re enjoying it. See what we can do when we all work together? 
Then what about babies who die of natural causes? Stillbirths? They’re too young to have experienced life’s challenges and matured.[/quote]
No where does it say that God ever intended for each human to have the same life span. Personally, I believe that every single life that is conceived has a purpose, even if it’s stillborn, aborted, or profoundly physically and mentally disabled. Lives impact other lives, for better or worse. We make choices about others, and we make choices about ourselves, and those choices aren’t unrelated. So, that’s to say, that even a miscarried or aborted baby, can (and I believe does) serve a purpose, and is/was intentional on the part of God.
But Fortigurn’s point, as I’m sure you’re aware, wasn’t that each human would grow and mature in the same way, through the same challenges.
How do we know that God is omnipotent? Only people have told us that, surely and they’re fallible as Hell.
Indeed. We don’t ‘know’ that God is omnipotent. Sure knowledge of such information is beyond our reach. It can only ever be a belief.
A superb (yet long) video by a former Christian on his deconversion to atheism. I learned quite a bit from it.
This seems like a cop-out answer me, and is a poor defense against the problem of evil. When pressed, the ultimate answer is, “I don’t know what the purpose is, I don’t have any specific reason for believing there is a purpose, but I believe it anyways.” My response is not directed at you, and I’m not putting words in your mouth. That’s just what I usually hear.
I had to stop reading the front page articles of my favorite news sites during the Elizabeth Smart trial. It was just too depressing. She testified that her abductor raped her repeatedly over the nine months of her captivity, usually several times a day. She stated that there was never a 24 hour period in which he did not rape her at least once. What is the purpose of such terrible suffering?
And of course, she was eventually rescued, which gives her story a happy ending, sort of, and provides her with at least the chance of a somewhat normal life. Usually, we just hear about the police finding the dead body of an abducted child, with multiple signs of sustained rape and torture. Then maybe they’ll find an abandoned shack where the kid was kept in a cage for months or years.
It would be nice if any believers here could provide specific reasons why God arranged the universe so people would suffer so horribly. Maybe we could get an application of the parent/child model, or some other theodicy.
I’d agree with that. I don’t want to relate the particular experience that made me think that, but you’d be surprised how lives-that-never-were can have an impact on those that still are.
And there is no “problem of evil”. God does not “permit” evil, nor did he arrange the universe so - except, of course, to allow humans to do as we choose. And we often choose to be thoroughly unpleasant to each other. To suggest that that is somehow God’s fault is simply a half-assed attempt to absolve ourselves of responsibility. Bad things happen because we choose to make them happen, or do not take action to stop them. As well as giving us a choice, he gave us a command: love one another. We all know that’s easier said than done, most of the time, but the more people who take it seriously and choose to do that, the fewer bad things are likely to happen. This is NOT religion. I get really, really upset about religious organisations (especially the Catholic church - motto: doing evil since 1489). It’s just belief, or faith if you prefer.
Here’s a little anecdote from my mum, who worked as a nurse in the 50’s. At the time, nurses were badly treated and underpaid - it was only a small step away from indentured servitude. As far as I can tell, she was conscientious about her job, but she hated her managers and the working environment and eventually left. A couple of years ago, my niece developed serious abdominal pain. The doctor didn’t see anything seriously amiss, and she just spent a couple of days in bed getting worse. My mum happened to visit, took one look at her and saw she had acute appendicitis. Sure enough, ambulance came, straight into surgery, and an appendix on the point of bursting was removed. There’s a good chance my mum saved her life - something which she couldn’t have done if she hadn’t spent 20 years in a borderline-abusive job. Did God ‘arrange’ for that crazy sequence of events? Pretty unlikely. My point is merely that it’s sometimes hard to tell, for us humans, what’s “evil” and what isn’t.
Another thought … some cosmologists like to ask “why is the universe here?”. Other cosmologists like to reply “where else would it be?”. So if you ask, “why should humans suffer this way?”, one might be tempted to respond “in what other way should they suffer?”. The simple fact of being human, on this planet, pretty much guarantees that humans will suffer in certain particular ways.
[quote=“Gao Bohan”]
It would be nice if any believers here could provide specific reasons why God arranged the universe so people would suffer so horribly. Maybe we could get an application of the parent/child model, or some other theodicy.[/quote]
I am not a believer, but if there were a god, this is the best model I can think of to explain the existence of why an omnipotent, all good god would still allow evil in the world.
Say I’m babysitting my nephew. He wants a candy bar. I tell him he can’t have a fricken candy bar. He throws himself to the ground kicking and screaming- suffering, really, in his childish mind- because he can’t have a candy bar. In his head, because he has very little experience and a limited world view, the absence of a candy bar in his grubby little hands is a travesty beyond belief. But to me, his perceived tormentor (because I’m allowing this suffering to happen when I could easily end it) it is not a tragedy. In fact, I know that I’m doing him a favor, because if he gets in the habit of eating candy before dinner long term, he’ll suffer even more. The same idea could be applied to any painful experience that parents allow their child to go through, knowing there will be a valuable lesson at the end of it.
Maybe the suffering that we see seems like suffering because of a lack of perspective, when to god it’s sad that we’re so sad, but in his mind he knows it’s for the greater good.
Anyways that’s what I told myself when I was in the midst of trying to believe in my childhood religion.
*EDIT awwww shit, is that the ‘parent/child’ model. Well fuck me I thought I was sayin something intelligent. Never heard that in church, always heard the ‘free will’ model. sorry 