Freethought & Rationalism Archive

luvluv · 04-02-2002, 05:38 PM

Jerry answer me this question, what exactly, do you want God to do?

a) stop all evil.

b) stop all occurances of certain types of evil (i.e. child abuse)

I don't think God could do a) and leave us with any type of meaningful free will. To ask God to stop all evil would eliminate even self-inflicted evil, which would effectively divest us of all of our moral decisions both to harm others and ourselves.

If your answer is b) then you and I both conceed that there would still be evil left in the world. There would still be victims of their loved ones committing suicide, having eating disorders, abusing drugs, mutilating themselves, etc.

So my question is, even if God were to do b) above, your question would still stand. God doing b) would not solve the problem of evil. There would still be people who were made to suffer by the actions of others. The mother whose child committed suicide would still wonder why God could not stop the evil of her child killing herself from occuring. She would still feel that God either lacked the power to stop her daughter from killing herself, or that he didn't care, or that he didn't exist.

My argument is that even in your scenario we are still left with the problem of evil, your argument would do nothing for the people who are suffering from the bad decisions of their loved ones.

I notice you kept your arguments to the pornography and did not address the smoker. Say a man has a dependant wife and children and he smokes 2 or 3 packs of cigarettes a day, and dies uninsured when his children are all under 12 years of age. These children will physically suffer for the decisions of his father. They will suffer pain, to be sure, but they will also suffer lack. Their physcial beings will be threatened. This kind of scenario occurs everyday. People who have people depending on them ruin their lives by ruining their own.

God could conceivably end all rape without dealing without taking out free will, but he could not solve the problem of evil itself without taking away free will. And it is impossible to give or recieve love if you do not have free will.

Even if God were to stop rape, that would not be enough to convince many humans who suffer from a thousand other vices that He is good. There would still be plenty of evil and suffering around to question.

luvluv · 04-02-2002, 05:42 PM

"People say there's evil and that God doesn't reveal himself because everyone would be forced to worship him, and that would violate free will...and then in the next sentence say that heaven is a place where nothing bad happens and everyone sits around and praises Jesus all day long.

I really have a hard time getting the story straight. If he's capable of making a place with "all good" (heaven), and doesn't (the earth), then he's not OMNIbenevolent...if heaven actually isn't "all good", but just "really really" good, like I've heard some say, then he's still not OMNIbenevolent."

What you are missing here is that God revealing his omnipotence on earth would entail him revealing himself to those who have not yet chosen to worship him. If he reveals himself to people in heaven he would be revealing himself to people who had ALREADY chosen to worship Him BEFORE he revealed himself. Therefore Him revealing Himself in Heaven is not influencing decisions, you have to have made the decision to worship Him to ever see Him in the first place.

He did not create earth to be Heaven, i.e. a place where everyone can see and interact with him, because that would remove our choice... our free will.

What you are missing, jdawg, is that this is all about our freedom to choose. The whole set up of planet earth and this life and pain and love is about our freedom to choose.

jdawg2 · 04-02-2002, 09:00 PM

Quote:

What you are missing here is that God revealing his omnipotence on earth would entail him revealing himself to those who have not yet chosen to worship him.

This is where atheists and theists go right past each other...why should we choose to worship something that hasn't revealed itself to us??? Apparently the most important decision concerning our eternal soul, and he plays hide and seek.

well that's wonderful.

Quote:

If he reveals himself to people in heaven he would be revealing himself to people who had ALREADY chosen to worship Him BEFORE he revealed himself. Therefore Him revealing Himself in Heaven is not influencing decisions, you have to have made the decision to worship Him to ever see Him in the first place.

once again, why is revealing himself and "influencing" our decision to worship him such a bad thing? Plus, theists love to say that god HAS revealed himself already (check the bible, he was apparently doing a lot of revealing then), so does that mean that everyone who claims to have a "relationship" with god lying? Also, it's important to mention that belief in god does not always equal worship of god.

Quote:

He did not create earth to be Heaven, i.e. a place where everyone can see and interact with him, because that would remove our choice... our free will.

once again, this seems to go against the fact that multitudes of people say they already interact with him (they also pray, hoping that he interacts with them even more!)

Maybe I'm just a bit slow, but it seems like God wants us to relate with him...but he doesn't seem to hold up his end of the bargain and relate with us (in this lifetime)

Quote:

What you are missing, jdawg, is that this is all about our freedom to choose. The whole set up of planet earth and this life and pain and love is about our freedom to choose.

does the existence of family and friends mean that you're "forced" to love them? If your child plays in a busy street and gets hit by a car, do you say "oh, I could've saved him, but I value his free will".

Apparently having free will is more important than the elimination of evil. Ok...I still can't see how this excuses god in any way. He requires free will...which require (according to some) evil acts to occur...so god, since he set up this whole system, does need evil in some way. Because if there isn't evil, there's no free will, right?

[ April 02, 2002: Message edited by: jdawg2 ]

04-03-2002, 04:06 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by luvluv:
Jerry answer me this question, what exactly, do you want God to do?

a) stop all evil.

b) stop all occurances of certain types of evil (i.e. child abuse)

Here we go again! <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />
I don't WANT God to do anything. We are evalutating the PROPERTIES of God (His Goodness or lack thereof, etc) based on what He already DOES. Whether he stops all evil is of absolutely no concern to me. Knowledge of whether he intervenes when Goodness requires intervention is all that is required in order for us to fairly and accurately decide whether he has all three properties that many claim he has: All-Goodness, All-Powerfulness, and Existence.

Quote:

If your answer is b) then you and I both conceed that there would still be evil left in the world.

Possibly so. That is not at issue. It may be that evil can exist in the world without God himself being evil, or being less than All-Good.

Quote:

There would still be victims of their loved ones committing suicide, having eating disorders, abusing drugs, mutilating themselves, etc.

Only if it is not a moral necessity to interfere with a person's attempt to harm themselves in one of those ways.

Quote:

So my question is, even if God were to do b) above, your question would still stand. God doing b) would not solve the problem of evil.

No, but it would tell us with certainty whether God was All-Good, All-Powerful, assuming that he exists.

Quote:

My argument is that even in your scenario we are still left with the problem of evil, your argument would do nothing for the people who are suffering from the bad decisions of their loved ones.

That may be the case. Some evil and/or suffering may be necessary for free-will to exist. But the position that God is All-Good would become defensible if my scenario were the reality.

Quote:

I notice you kept your arguments to the pornography and did not address the smoker. Say a man has a dependant wife and children and he smokes 2 or 3 packs of cigarettes a day, and dies uninsured when his children are all under 12 years of age. These children will physically suffer for the decisions of his father. They will suffer pain, to be sure, but they will also suffer lack.

God may choose not to interfere in the man's smoking. He might choose instead to provide for the lack the children would suffer when deprived of their father. Any number of good reasons He might choose to do that. The point is, if God is Good, he isn't going to shrug and say "oh well" while watching children slowly starve to death, etc.. If he is good, the father's free-will argument is cold-comfort to salve his good conscience. Only his assistance will suffice.

Quote:

God could conceivably end all rape without dealing without taking out free will, but he could not solve the problem of evil itself without taking away free will. And it is impossible to give or recieve love if you do not have free will.

As detailed above... the problem of evil is more or less irrelevant, and the free-will of a rapist is less important than the humanity of his victim.

Quote:

Even if God were to stop rape, that would not be enough to convince many humans who suffer from a thousand other vices that He is good. There would still be plenty of evil and suffering around to question.

Perhaps there would still be evil, and perhaps even suffering, and perhaps there would be suffering that was not self-inflicted. But, If God were Good and intervened as Goodness required, then it would at least be possible for Theists to defend the position that he is All-Good and All-Powerful, because what examples of evil were left would be examples that do not create a moral necessity to intervene.

OK?

04-03-2002, 04:11 AM

luvluv,
one more thing:

You seem to believe that maintaining the possibility of free-will is more important than preventing harm to the innocent because free-will is necessary for love (a great good) to exist. I think you should notice that it is possible to have no free will in any other area, and still have a free will choice whether or not to love a given person thing or Higher Being. You might not have a free-will choice to rape someone and still ahve a free-will choice to love them.

Just so you know.

Tinker · 04-05-2002, 05:16 PM

luvluv
--------------------
What you are missing here is that God revealing his omnipotence on earth would entail him revealing himself to those who have not yet chosen to worship him. If he reveals himself to people in heaven he would be revealing himself to people who had ALREADY chosen to worship Him BEFORE he revealed himself. Therefore Him revealing Himself in Heaven is not influencing decisions, you have to have made the decision to worship Him to ever see Him in the first place.
----------------------

This statement seems to go against the god according to the Bible. According to the Bible god did choose to reveal himself to people before they have chosen to worship him. Eg. Moses and the burning bush. Moses worshiped god after god revealed himself to Moses. Etc.

--------------------------
He did not create earth to be Heaven, i.e. a place where everyone can see and interact with him, because that would remove our choice... our free will.
---------------------------

Not according to the Bible. Adam and Eve did have a full interaction with god before they even realised that they had any free will. The reason they ceased to have full interaction was because they 'went against gods orders' and not because earth was meant to be a place of free will where they could start from not knowing god and then choose, and then have god reveal himself to them. Your argument seems to be in opposition to what is writen in the Bible. Biblical god actually seems surprised and astonished at people excersing their 'free will' and he goes on to destroy in anger those who exercised their 'free will' by choosing not to take his side, eg flood.

--------------------
What you are missing, jdawg, is that this is all about our freedom to choose. The whole set up of planet earth and this life and pain and love is about our freedom to choose.
--------------------

This doesn't seem to be the case according to the Bible. Eve did not exercise her free will, she was deceived the first time she excercised her 'freedom to choose', either because of lack of knowledge or whatever, but she did not choose one or the other freely. According to the Bible, the freedom to choose, which humanity now supposedly has, came about because Adam and Eve disobeyed god in the first place. They ate the fruit and gained the knowledge of good and evil. You can have 'freedom of choice' only when you have knowledge of one and the other.
So if god made the world in order for humanity to have a freedom of choice, then god chose a very funny way of bringing that about. It is as if he said: " I created this place called Earth so you can exercise your freedom of choice, but I forbid you to eat of the tree which will give you the knowledge of good an evil and the freedom of choice." It would seem that it was only after they ate the fruit that Adam, Eve and humanity gained the 'freedom to choose' and other conditions which you mention, ie god revealing himself to people AFTER they had chosen to worship him. These conditions did not seem to exist in the Garden of Eden.
And if you say that god created the earth so that people would have the freedom to choose, his plan would necessarily have to include the existance of both good and evil and also people who have knowledge of good and evil. But then, by reading through Genesis, it would seem that god also wanted to get out of taking the responsibility for creating evil by blaming Adam and Eve for the evil which entered their lives, for the fall of the humanity and for the hiddeness of god. And the conditions which you are talking about (freedom to choose, god revealing himself after the individual has chosen to worship god etc) according to the Bible exist because Adam and Eve did not choose to follow god.

So, it would seem that a) christian god did not create the earth with a 'freedom to choose' in mind, or
b) Adam and Eve did the right thing by eating the fruit, they were actually obeying god when they ate the fruit, because this act brought about the conditions which you mention - freedom to choose, god revealing himself after the individual has chosen to worship god - both of which you are saying were gods' purpose for creating the earth and and it was in his plan all along. But then there is a question - have Adam and Eve then really sinned? (according to the Bible sin is a disobedience to god)

Tinker
PS - hello everybody, I am new to this forum.
Please excuse my English, it is not my first language.

luvluv · 04-06-2002, 09:09 AM

Good points Tinker (and your English seems fine to me, if you didn't tell me it wasn't your first language I never would have suspected it).

First, I guess the short way to answer your questions is that I am not a Biblical literalist: I don't take the Adam and Eve story to be literally true.

But, there are some problems with your theory even within the Biblical literalist tradition:

1) Most Christians do not believe that free will came into the world as a result of Eve's choice, but that sin came into the world as a result of Eve's choice. Eve obviously had to have free will in order to choose the apple in the first place.

2) Most Christians don't believe that Eve's decision neccessitated the break from God because she did something that was knowingly evil, but that she did something which demonstrated distrust in God. The snake made Eve believe that God was not trustworthy, which in the Christian religion disqualifies one from having a relationship with God. ("For without faith, it is impossible to please God") Eve did not have to have a concious knowledge of good and evil to break from God, she merely had to demonstrate doubt in his character. So, for her to know the precise morality of her action is not necessary.

Admittedly though, the Adam and Eve story does throw a bit of a monkey wrench into my idea, if it happened as it was written in the Bible. I don't believe that it did, but lets deal with it nontheless. I think God's presence among them was coercive, but obviously this is not as large a problem when dealing with two beings as it would be when dealing with millions of different nationalities and backgrounds. Just like your involvement with your own children would be appropriate at some levels of their development but inappropriate at others. You would be a good parent for checking your childs underwear when he was an infant, but to do the same thing when he was 16 or 17 would be inappropriate. For God to provide his new creatures with a bit of guidance on their first dawning of consciousness (remember according the story Adam was around by himself for a while) would not at all be inappropriate. A lone, sentient life form could benefit from being informed as to the why's and wherefore's of his existence, at least initially. But for God to have that same level of involvement with humans today would be inappropriate, and incompatible with our free development into the creatures he desires us to be.

But I also happen to believe that God is always working for the long-term, and even while he was addressing Adam and Eve, he was working on what he knew would be the long term conditions of life on Earth. He knew what Adam and Eve, what all humans, would do with free-will, and he planned with that in mind.

ex-preacher · 04-06-2002, 04:37 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by luvluv:

But I also happen to believe that God is always working for the long-term, and even while he was addressing Adam and Eve, he was working on what he knew would be the long term conditions of life on Earth. He knew what Adam and Eve, what all humans, would do with free-will, and he planned with that in mind.

Isn't that a comforting thought? God knew everything that would happen - every child that would be killed, every rape that would occur, every victim of genocide (including those he would order), every torture, every disease he would send, every victim of drowning or burning or war, every person he would send to hell - and he still let it go forward

Why? Because he loves us so much!

Why exactly did God need to create people and let everything unfold if he already knew the outcome? What's the point? Does he need all these people to tell him endlessly how wonderful he is (or else!)? If such a God existed, why in the world would you want to worship him ad nauseum, ad infinitum? If a human being acted the way he supposedly has and demanded our love in return, we would lock him up.

luvluv · 04-07-2002, 03:37 PM

Would you rather not exist?

"How could I, if I did not exist, profit by not existing?"

C.S. Lewis.

I also think you folks are being a little unfair. Life has some bad things, but it has some good things too. I'm sure all of you have suffered some pain in your life, and I'm sure you've all had some joy. Is the pain so much worse than the joy that you would rather have never existed?

ex-preacher · 04-07-2002, 03:48 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by luvluv:
I also think you folks are being a little unfair. Life has some bad things, but it has some good things too. I'm sure all of you have suffered some pain in your life, and I'm sure you've all had some joy. Is the pain so much worse than the joy that you would rather have never existed?

Personally, I love existing. I love it even more now than I did when I thought that a god existed. I think you'll find that the vast majority of atheists love life. We also love the truth, even when it shows us that some of the things we would like to believe in don't really exist. Would you rather know a painful and liberating truth, or live a happy, deceived falsehood?

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04-02-2002, 05:38 PM	#111
luvluv Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Planet Lovetron Posts: 3,919	Jerry answer me this question, what exactly, do you want God to do? a) stop all evil. b) stop all occurances of certain types of evil (i.e. child abuse) I don't think God could do a) and leave us with any type of meaningful free will. To ask God to stop all evil would eliminate even self-inflicted evil, which would effectively divest us of all of our moral decisions both to harm others and ourselves. If your answer is b) then you and I both conceed that there would still be evil left in the world. There would still be victims of their loved ones committing suicide, having eating disorders, abusing drugs, mutilating themselves, etc. So my question is, even if God were to do b) above, your question would still stand. God doing b) would not solve the problem of evil. There would still be people who were made to suffer by the actions of others. The mother whose child committed suicide would still wonder why God could not stop the evil of her child killing herself from occuring. She would still feel that God either lacked the power to stop her daughter from killing herself, or that he didn't care, or that he didn't exist. My argument is that even in your scenario we are still left with the problem of evil, your argument would do nothing for the people who are suffering from the bad decisions of their loved ones. I notice you kept your arguments to the pornography and did not address the smoker. Say a man has a dependant wife and children and he smokes 2 or 3 packs of cigarettes a day, and dies uninsured when his children are all under 12 years of age. These children will physically suffer for the decisions of his father. They will suffer pain, to be sure, but they will also suffer lack. Their physcial beings will be threatened. This kind of scenario occurs everyday. People who have people depending on them ruin their lives by ruining their own. God could conceivably end all rape without dealing without taking out free will, but he could not solve the problem of evil itself without taking away free will. And it is impossible to give or recieve love if you do not have free will. Even if God were to stop rape, that would not be enough to convince many humans who suffer from a thousand other vices that He is good. There would still be plenty of evil and suffering around to question.

04-02-2002, 05:42 PM	#112
luvluv Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Planet Lovetron Posts: 3,919	"People say there's evil and that God doesn't reveal himself because everyone would be forced to worship him, and that would violate free will...and then in the next sentence say that heaven is a place where nothing bad happens and everyone sits around and praises Jesus all day long. I really have a hard time getting the story straight. If he's capable of making a place with "all good" (heaven), and doesn't (the earth), then he's not OMNIbenevolent...if heaven actually isn't "all good", but just "really really" good, like I've heard some say, then he's still not OMNIbenevolent." What you are missing here is that God revealing his omnipotence on earth would entail him revealing himself to those who have not yet chosen to worship him. If he reveals himself to people in heaven he would be revealing himself to people who had ALREADY chosen to worship Him BEFORE he revealed himself. Therefore Him revealing Himself in Heaven is not influencing decisions, you have to have made the decision to worship Him to ever see Him in the first place. He did not create earth to be Heaven, i.e. a place where everyone can see and interact with him, because that would remove our choice... our free will. What you are missing, jdawg, is that this is all about our freedom to choose. The whole set up of planet earth and this life and pain and love is about our freedom to choose.

04-03-2002, 04:11 AM	#115
Jerry Smith Guest Posts: n/a	luvluv, one more thing: You seem to believe that maintaining the possibility of free-will is more important than preventing harm to the innocent because free-will is necessary for love (a great good) to exist. I think you should notice that it is possible to have no free will in any other area, and still have a free will choice whether or not to love a given person thing or Higher Being. You might not have a free-will choice to rape someone and still ahve a free-will choice to love them. Just so you know.

04-05-2002, 05:16 PM	#116
Tinker New Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Australia Posts: 3	luvluv -------------------- What you are missing here is that God revealing his omnipotence on earth would entail him revealing himself to those who have not yet chosen to worship him. If he reveals himself to people in heaven he would be revealing himself to people who had ALREADY chosen to worship Him BEFORE he revealed himself. Therefore Him revealing Himself in Heaven is not influencing decisions, you have to have made the decision to worship Him to ever see Him in the first place. ---------------------- This statement seems to go against the god according to the Bible. According to the Bible god did choose to reveal himself to people before they have chosen to worship him. Eg. Moses and the burning bush. Moses worshiped god after god revealed himself to Moses. Etc. -------------------------- He did not create earth to be Heaven, i.e. a place where everyone can see and interact with him, because that would remove our choice... our free will. --------------------------- Not according to the Bible. Adam and Eve did have a full interaction with god before they even realised that they had any free will. The reason they ceased to have full interaction was because they 'went against gods orders' and not because earth was meant to be a place of free will where they could start from not knowing god and then choose, and then have god reveal himself to them. Your argument seems to be in opposition to what is writen in the Bible. Biblical god actually seems surprised and astonished at people excersing their 'free will' and he goes on to destroy in anger those who exercised their 'free will' by choosing not to take his side, eg flood. -------------------- What you are missing, jdawg, is that this is all about our freedom to choose. The whole set up of planet earth and this life and pain and love is about our freedom to choose. -------------------- This doesn't seem to be the case according to the Bible. Eve did not exercise her free will, she was deceived the first time she excercised her 'freedom to choose', either because of lack of knowledge or whatever, but she did not choose one or the other freely. According to the Bible, the freedom to choose, which humanity now supposedly has, came about because Adam and Eve disobeyed god in the first place. They ate the fruit and gained the knowledge of good and evil. You can have 'freedom of choice' only when you have knowledge of one and the other. So if god made the world in order for humanity to have a freedom of choice, then god chose a very funny way of bringing that about. It is as if he said: " I created this place called Earth so you can exercise your freedom of choice, but I forbid you to eat of the tree which will give you the knowledge of good an evil and the freedom of choice." It would seem that it was only after they ate the fruit that Adam, Eve and humanity gained the 'freedom to choose' and other conditions which you mention, ie god revealing himself to people AFTER they had chosen to worship him. These conditions did not seem to exist in the Garden of Eden. And if you say that god created the earth so that people would have the freedom to choose, his plan would necessarily have to include the existance of both good and evil and also people who have knowledge of good and evil. But then, by reading through Genesis, it would seem that god also wanted to get out of taking the responsibility for creating evil by blaming Adam and Eve for the evil which entered their lives, for the fall of the humanity and for the hiddeness of god. And the conditions which you are talking about (freedom to choose, god revealing himself after the individual has chosen to worship god etc) according to the Bible exist because Adam and Eve did not choose to follow god. So, it would seem that a) christian god did not create the earth with a 'freedom to choose' in mind, or b) Adam and Eve did the right thing by eating the fruit, they were actually obeying god when they ate the fruit, because this act brought about the conditions which you mention - freedom to choose, god revealing himself after the individual has chosen to worship god - both of which you are saying were gods' purpose for creating the earth and and it was in his plan all along. But then there is a question - have Adam and Eve then really sinned? (according to the Bible sin is a disobedience to god) Tinker PS - hello everybody, I am new to this forum. Please excuse my English, it is not my first language.

04-06-2002, 09:09 AM	#117
luvluv Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Planet Lovetron Posts: 3,919	Good points Tinker (and your English seems fine to me, if you didn't tell me it wasn't your first language I never would have suspected it). First, I guess the short way to answer your questions is that I am not a Biblical literalist: I don't take the Adam and Eve story to be literally true. But, there are some problems with your theory even within the Biblical literalist tradition: 1) Most Christians do not believe that free will came into the world as a result of Eve's choice, but that sin came into the world as a result of Eve's choice. Eve obviously had to have free will in order to choose the apple in the first place. 2) Most Christians don't believe that Eve's decision neccessitated the break from God because she did something that was knowingly evil, but that she did something which demonstrated distrust in God. The snake made Eve believe that God was not trustworthy, which in the Christian religion disqualifies one from having a relationship with God. ("For without faith, it is impossible to please God") Eve did not have to have a concious knowledge of good and evil to break from God, she merely had to demonstrate doubt in his character. So, for her to know the precise morality of her action is not necessary. Admittedly though, the Adam and Eve story does throw a bit of a monkey wrench into my idea, if it happened as it was written in the Bible. I don't believe that it did, but lets deal with it nontheless. I think God's presence among them was coercive, but obviously this is not as large a problem when dealing with two beings as it would be when dealing with millions of different nationalities and backgrounds. Just like your involvement with your own children would be appropriate at some levels of their development but inappropriate at others. You would be a good parent for checking your childs underwear when he was an infant, but to do the same thing when he was 16 or 17 would be inappropriate. For God to provide his new creatures with a bit of guidance on their first dawning of consciousness (remember according the story Adam was around by himself for a while) would not at all be inappropriate. A lone, sentient life form could benefit from being informed as to the why's and wherefore's of his existence, at least initially. But for God to have that same level of involvement with humans today would be inappropriate, and incompatible with our free development into the creatures he desires us to be. But I also happen to believe that God is always working for the long-term, and even while he was addressing Adam and Eve, he was working on what he knew would be the long term conditions of life on Earth. He knew what Adam and Eve, what all humans, would do with free-will, and he planned with that in mind.

04-07-2002, 03:37 PM	#119
luvluv Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Planet Lovetron Posts: 3,919	Would you rather not exist? "How could I, if I did not exist, profit by not existing?" C.S. Lewis. I also think you folks are being a little unfair. Life has some bad things, but it has some good things too. I'm sure all of you have suffered some pain in your life, and I'm sure you've all had some joy. Is the pain so much worse than the joy that you would rather have never existed?

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