Nice
In this situation, I could see it being done in order to announce that you have the power to alter reality on a whim, and really need people to get with the program.
So I would say it would depend on your other intentions, as if you have the creative power that is chested, you could easily bring someone back to life and place them in another scenario until they actually understand what you’re trying to tell them.
I don’t have enough information to ascertain whether or not the omnipotent being is evil or just a prankster.
Why do you have to “announce” your capabilities to beings you designed? Why do you have to onboard them to your “program” at all? If you truly are omnipotent, simply make beings that already know, and are already with the program. Assuming that is indeed what you want, why would you do anything else?
Are you throwing in extra steps for your own amusement? Just as a prank? Why? You’re omniscient. You already know how it ends. What’s amusing about it?
You are either toying with beings you created to be non-accepting and deliberately presenting conditions that won’t convince them, or you’re lacking one or both of omnipotence or omniscience.
An argument straight from the edgy teen atheist textbook, sure, but nonetheless one I have yet to see a compelling rebuttal for.
But, by your argument, you do have enough evidence to rule out benevolence, no?
No not really, my friends and I fuck with each other all the time, but we never do permanent harm or majorly inconvience each other.
If I could just snap my fingers and rewrite reality, I’d totally put those closest to me through a haunted mansion to be just by a serial killer, maybe even have them die a couple of times as a joke…
Then I’d bring them back to life and we’d go to the planet of nymphomaniacs to laugh it off over a few ambrosial liqours and impossibly large breasted company.
“You really had me going with the whole Saw trap, but then when I cut off my leg to escape the trap you changed my biology so that I could just re-attach it. Such a kidder.”
I mean, if evil always shoots itself in the foot, this guy’s off to a good start. Why would you get them to agree to blame you for putting them there, and then free them? Chaotic stupid.
I feel like that would make me some edgy child, messing around with legos or playdough.
ITT: A collectively poor understanding of Christian theology
Why did you assume “christian theology” ? I can think of many religion that fit the description
If you think Christianity fits this description then you have a poor understanding of Christianity.
For this to be more accurate you need to take the “God” out of the image entirely.
I mean, the trolley obviously can’t fit under the bridge, so this seems like a mass murder/suicide scenario.
The bridge will part!
Using the power of beyblade!
Me when I split the sea with a bayblade
What if the trolley can shrink when going under the bridge
I’d like to propose a thought.
1.) God makes rules
2.) Following those rules is good
3.) Breaking those rules is evil
From the perspective of God the delineation between good and evil is a human perspective, not necessarily God’s.
A similar point of view would be if a person sets a rule for a child or maybe a pet. The person strictly enforces this rule, but openly breaks the rule because it does not apply to them. The child or pet meet feel that they are being treated unjustly and categorize breaking of the rules as being wrong. Making the child go to bed at bedtime or not allowing the pet to eat certain foods.
What many atheists do not understand is that human logic does not apply to God(s), just like the feelings of my dog wanting a slice of pizza do not apply to me.
Is God evil, probably, what is evil? What is good? Is God just? In application to others if you’re following Christian ideology he theoretically is in the long term, but in application to their self definitely not.
The biggest problem I have with Atheist logic is that if there is a god that it should follow human logic and because there is suffering and issues in the world there must be no god or that God isn’t worth following. If after life beliefs are correct do you think it matters if you took a moral high ground against an unfair god?
If you’re an atheist because you don’t believe there is a god then cool, but if you are an atheist because you think God should follow our rules idk what to say for you.
The same goes for religious people, you have to accept that God let’s bad things happen to you.
The simple obvious answer is that there is no God. If there is, I want no part of an afterlife with him.
“God is so moral that he doesn’t need earthly morals” is an absolutely laughable justification. May God strike me dead before I click the “reply” button, if I’m wrong.
Hey, that’s chill. I’m not trying to appeal to people to change their opinions on whether there is a god or not. I’m simply arguing that if what is said about god is true, then taking the moral high ground because you’re the better being doesn’t really mean anything.
“Hey what did you do that landed you up in eternal pain and suffering?”
“Oh, I’m just morally superior to the being that put me here.”
The same goes for religious people blaming the bad things in their life on anything other than the same all powerful being.
The religious blame the bad things on Satan, not God. Pretty convenient. God gets all of the credit an none of the blame. It’s delusional.
Also, what rational argument suggests there is eternal pain and suffering? Some old Mediterranean folk lore twisted through time, with more Faust and Inferno (Dante) than scripture in the current belief? I don’t see any reason to rationally believe there is eternal pain and suffering.
IDK, I was going for the more extreme groups of religious groups. In some religious beliefs your belief in god has less effect on your post death outcome. Maybe in those you become a cat rather than burn in eternal pain for not believing in xyz god.
In high school I wrote a paper about the dichotomy of religious beliefs portrayed in Beowulf. My paper was about how the embracing of a new religion was personified by the acts of good being attributed to god, but the acts of evil were attributed to the non-biblical and villainous entities being portrayed by pagan representations. Essentially, as new cultures adopted Christianity they had a core issue in assigning blame to god for the ills in their lives so they were instead assigned it to something else that was still familiar (another cultural belief). This lead to a short period in which these peoples earnestly believed in both religious pantheons.
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but if you are an atheist because you think God should follow our rules
You can’t be an Atheist if you believe a god exists that should follow our rules.
That is like the whole point of Atheism.
Tell that to the self proclaimed atheists that use the morality of God as a reason why there is no god. To be clear I agree, but I’m tired of hearing the argument.
Again, atheists tend to argue the LPOE terribly.
The Argument From Evil, properly stated, concludes that no god exists because it defines God as a necessarily omnipotent/omni-benevolent being. I think it’s weak because it leans on a version of God that most religious people don’t REALLY believe. It then leans on the fact that lines like “God is not good” or “God is not omnipotent” gets religious folks’ back up.
If the only way an atheist argument wins is because the valid logic objections to it are frustrating to Christians, it’s not a great argument.
But stated right, it IS still an argument for the nonexistence of God, not an argument that “God exists but is immoral”.
I’ll be the first to say the new trend of atheists horribly mangle the Problem of Evil, and while they rebut responses like yours, they tend to do so horribly and emotionally. But properly stated, Divine Command theory really doesn’t work.
The LPOE is challenging one of two traits for God: omnipotence or omni-benevolence. And those two concepts are defined in reasonable, quantitative ways. The God in the your example is a direct acceptance of the LPOE by the admission that god isn’t “benevolent” at all by that definition. Which is perfectly fine, but it does create a lot of very valid moral or ethical problems, along the line of Hedonistic salvation.
The rest of my reply doesn’t belong with LPOE, but this is focusing on the rules side instead of the suffering side.
You see it as a parent setting rules for a child, but it can also accurately be seen as (sorry, both of these come from the show Suits, and apparently the showrunners have a problem with moms) “mommy tells the child he’ll get a Playstation if he lies to the judge about daddy hitting her”. OR, “mommy will punish you if you tell daddy what she did with the mailman last night”. Rules are not inherently Good by most standards.
And that’s before you add the uncertainty. We’re 100% definitely not “following rules that our parents gave us”. We’re following rules we found typed up on a piece of paper that some people **insist ** came from our parents, and maybe they did. And some of them seem really weird or even harmful, and seem to contradict what we think mom and dad want for us. And we have to decide whether or not we’re going to follow them before our parents come home. Because daddy will murder us if we’re wrong. And I don’t mean a beating, I mean with his God-glock.
What many atheists do not understand is that human logic does not apply to God(s), just like the feelings of my dog wanting a slice of pizza do not apply to me
This is true, but you can still pass some judgement on a dog who acts out of possessive-aggression. But of course, we are more responsible for our actions than dogs, aren’t we? Why? Because we have more agency than dogs. Guess who has the most agency, assuming there’s a God? That would make him the most accountable. When he does something prima facie evil and the more you analyze his actions the weaker the objections get, then “Good is just what God wants and evil is just what he doesn’t want” simply doesn’t cut it.
Is God evil, probably, what is evil? What is good? Is God just? In application to others if you’re following Christian ideology he theoretically is in the long term, but in application to their self definitely not.
I think there are Christian ideologies that can make sense of it all, but contingent salvation is as filmsy to philosophical attack as wet cardboard. I would encourage you to listen/read Dr. Josh Rasmussen for his in-depth research into the Problem of Evil and Salvation from an open-minded Christian perspective. He, too, concludes that God cannot pass the Problem of Evil if there is contingent salvation. But he stands by the Ontological Argument, so conceding “God isn’t all-good” is not on the table for his POV.
The biggest problem I have with Atheist logic is that if there is a god that it should follow human logic and because there is suffering and issues in the world there must be no god or that God isn’t worth following. If after life beliefs are correct do you think it matters if you took a moral high ground against an unfair god?
Ironically, I would hope a Christian would be the first person to say YES IT MATTERS because they stand behind martyrdom as a legitimate virtue. Let me put it this way. If Christianity were true with one exception, that the Devil ultimately wins instead of God, would you kneel to him because your eternity is more important than actually being a good person? Would you be able to respect a person who does unspeakable evils, knowing they are unspeakable evils, because they get to selfishly be immortal?
If so, I think you’ve just given atheists the win. If not, then at least you can understand (if not agree) rejecting a God you think is evil.
The same goes for religious people, you have to accept that God let’s bad things happen to you.
Yeah, I’m fine with that. I think the true god is neither omnipotent nor omni-benevolent. God can be a jerk sometimes, but so can I, and I don’t have to debase myself or put him far above me, so I can forgive god. If that gets me a good afterlife, I got there in a way I’ll never regret. If that gets me eternal damnation, at least I know I didn’t selfishly throw away my morals for personal gain.
But what if following the rules got the pet or child hurt, and not following them would not hurt them. Because that is the case here.
I completely understand the analogy, but the result bestowed upon the child/pet is what determines the subject : good/evil.
Though I read a very good comment here that said both options could and should be replaced by “responsible”, which actually makes a lot is sense.
Unless the creatures, overall, would prefer to have never existed in the first place, then the Creator isn’t evil and should be praised(, that’s only one reason, for example an other one would be our search for Absolute/Greatness/Good/…)
Evil is a dumb term. The word they are looking for is “responsible”.
It was already a fun thread, but this comment upps it a notch.
No no no, doesn’t stop there.
Then you created a business, run by your most…devout… followers, they’ll manage the business.
You pay them to collect money for you, and um, teach them the ways and make sure they bring their families and friends in.
You tell them they are all horrible people who will suffer in eternity unless they worship you and thank you that they were born.
Then your managers, they meet with all your followers and
shake them downtell them how important it is to fund the business.It’s a very complex thing really being the creator of the universe and having to have people start a business to fund…um…worshiping you…
Substitute the trolley for a tornado, the tracks for homes, the deity killing randomly with said tornado, and the survivors thanking deity for their survival (and their neighbors’ deaths).
Not a good analogy? Of course it isn’t. God doesn’t exist, and if he does, he’s perfectly happy killing you and destroying your family for no reason whatsoever, and your neighbors will thank him for doing so.
You’re not mysterious! You’re just a jerk!
When a creator does it, the word is “ineffable”. Just like how when I’m rich, I’ll become eccentric.
Nah, fuck that. I’m eccentric now. What’s a rich guy going to do about it?
They’ll be beside themselves if this ever gets out. They might be driven to buy multiple motor yachts that they’ll never even clap eyes on, to cope with that
And then when they all believe, you change the rules because you accidentally spawned to many people.
God: “I can only save some of you!”
People: “How many?”
God: “Twelve…”
People: “Twelve?!? But there are many more of us”
God: “Times 12…”
People: “144?!? But there are still many more!”
God:“… thousand.”
People “Oh lord, I’m one of those 144000, right?”
God: “Of course you are my dear”.
Other people:“…but you already saved more than 144000 before we were even born?”
God:" yeah well, just believe me OK?"
Depends on denomination but source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/144,000
It’s amazing that there are so many different interpretation. Religious people have such creative imaginations.
I’m reading a fictional book series where a character in the first few books literally becomes the new god… then the later books take place a few hundred years later, and you see how the new god laid everything out for the people, and gave them books on how to prosper and all this valuable info… and STILL these idiots ended up forming various competing religions, full of BS!
mistborn saga, right?
Haha yup!
